Hot Young Talent: UK Designer/Illustrator Kyle Bean

0 CommentsFriday • June 15, 2012 • by Majka Kaiser

Portraits from pencil shavings for the 2011 Wallpaper* Handmade Issue by Kyle Bean

At a mere 25 years of age, Brighton based designer, illustrator, and set builder, Kyle Bean has already amassed an astonishing portfolio including installation work for London’s top department stores Liberty and Selfridges, international luxury brands Hermés, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Peugeot, and editorial work for acclaimed publications Wallpaper*, Financial Times, New York Times, and GQ. What distinguishes Bean from the rest? His highly conceptual art is well formulated, distilled down to one simple idea, infused with a generous dollop of humour, and executed with utmost panache. I had the opportunity to ask Bean a few burning questions I had about the cache and pressure of working for world famous brands, adapting to the life of a freelance artist, and working with a team of Tim Burton’s animators on a 30 second piece of stop-motion animation for Peugeot.

Landing a commission for Liberty is pretty impressive, and even more so, as it was your first fresh from university. Can you tell us how this opportunity came about and describe the process involved working on this particular project and what it’s like to work with one of London’s most prestigious department stores?Yes it was a very lucky break. I got the job during my degree show exhibition in  summer 2009. The visual merchandiser  from Liberty had come to see the show and came across my work on display. We met and he told me about a possible job which was a collaboration between Liberty and Hermes. I obviously expressed a lot of interest and then a week or two later we met in London to go over the details. I made three installation pieces to sit inside Liberty’s scarf room. Each piece depicted a Victorian contraption made entirely from orange Hermés packaging boxes. Although it was a little daunting for a first commission, I had plenty of time to work on it so I did not feel the time pressure that I have with most jobs.

Paper letters Bean created for Liberty department store’s ‘Liberty Print’ booklet

The five window installation “The law of matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed” for Selfridges, resulted from your response to their call for artists’ submissions. As a visual merchandiser for a department store here in Christchurch, I’m innately curious as to how their VM department works – talk about dream job! Are there any insights you can share from behind the scenes? I don’t think I will ever have the luxury to work on a job like this again. It was completely out of the blue and I had so much freedom. Selfridges have a long standing tradition of collaborating with outside artists and designers to work on their displays. They came to my agent (Blink Art) and asked me to pitch an idea to them that would run across their five windows. The budget was quite small and the time frame quite tight so my idea had to be very manageable and yet creative. They briefed me with the simple title ‘Object of Desire’. From that I developed this idea that each window would showcase one object, but show it in different forms, whether that be deconstructed or reformed into something new. Selfridges loved the idea and so we got to work pretty quickly. I designed each window and worked on the construction of the had crafted elements, such as the fairytale castle made from books and the cardboard chair. Selfridges have a small team of engineers to construct the steel weighing scales and visual merchandisers who helped source all of the other props that I required. Selfridges sought sponsorship from Honda for the two motorbikes that I wanted, as we did not have the budget to buy two motorbikes outright. It was a great experience being part of a big and exciting project like that.

Of the five windows the deconstruction of the motorcycles must have required detailed preparation. How did you go about organising the different parts and dealing with the logistics of hanging each part? Yes. So once we had Honda on board, they had a specialist to take one of the bikes apart into all of its components. They then delivered the two bikes. The engineers at Selfridges pre-assembled the scales with the hanging mobile ‘plate’ that was to hold the motorbike parts. I then spent a whole day with assistants in a live installation to hang all of the individual parts on the scales. Passers by could see the installation take place.

Bean’s ambitious window installation for Selfridges, London, 2010

As Art Director for the recent ‘Paperwork’ stop-motion ad for Peugeot, you had the fantastic opportunity to work with experienced animators who’ve worked on some of Tim Burton’s feature films. Stop-motion animation is a laborious process which I imagine requires great patience and absolute attention to the tiniest detail. What did you find to be the greatest lessons you learnt during this project? With this project it was very much a collaborative process and one that I loved. With the majority of my work, I’m usually only working with a photographer, but on this occasion we had a big team consisting of producers, animators, riggers, a DOP, lighting specialists, prop makers and a pre-vis artist. I worked closely from day one with the director, Joseph Mann. As art director, I was in charge of designing the look of the commercial and working out how all of the physical elements,both still and moving, were to be made. As Joe worked on his storyboards, I worked on tests to make the paper car and various paper elements that you see in the advert. By the time the storyboard and pre-vis was approved we were already working with a big team of model makers to help me make all of the paper models and sets. It was indeed a very time consuming process. We worked for two months on the job in total. One month was spent building the models and sets. It took us over a week to animate everything for the 30 second advert. I learnt a great deal from everyone involved and made me realise how important collaboration is. (Check out the making of the ad here – facinating! ed.)

A miniature set built by Bean for an editorial piece for the Financial Times Weekend Magazine

Are there particular people or brands you’d love to work with that you haven’t yet? I’d like to work with some interesting museums such as the V&A as well as the Science Museum. I’d also like to maybe work with a couple of publishers to work on a book cover or two. I would also love to work on another exciting window display project soon, as I have mainly been focused on editorial work recently. I like to mix things up a bit.

What’s the great advice or lesson learnt thus far in your career? Firstly, I believe it is important to do personal work from time to time. I have often got very interesting projects as a direct result from working on new personal work which pushes me into new directions. Secondly, I have found that staying curious about things is most invaluable in terms of coming up with ideas. It might sound strange but I think that sometimes it helps to see things like a child would!

What has been your most satisfying project thus far? Commissioned work, it would have to be my Selfridges windows. Personally, making my chicken out of eggshells was a big achievement too as it was so tricky to make!

“What Came First?”, one of Kyle’s more challenging self-initiated projects which have led to a commission for CUT magazine.

Who in your related fields do you most admire and why? In general I am just very excited by anyone who has a real passion for working with their hands and are able to communicate interesting ideas through craft. People such as Peter Crawley, Sarah Illenberger and Craig Ward are good examples of people who consistently excite me with what they produce and their approach to design.

Are you familiar with the Sydney based paper engineer, Benja Harney? I know he spent many years working a full-time graphic design job and squeezing in time for his artwork every other waking moment, before being able to finally quit his day job and dedicate all his energies on his number one passion; paper engineering. Some would say you’re in a privileged position to have the luxury of working full-time on your art, I remember struggling in my early freelancing days with the isolation of working alone, time management, and maintaining a balanced lifestyle.  How do you find the world of freelancing? Yes Benja and I have spoken via Twitter. Twitter is so good for discovering people in your creative field I find! It helps me feel much more connected and knowledgeable about our industry too which can only be a good thing. I don’t know much about how Benja started, but for me it was certainly at the end of my degree that things kicked off. I stayed working part time at a job for about six months after graduating, but I quit once I realised that my income from freelance work was just about sustainable and I could pay all my bills etc. It was a hard decision, and some months I feel like I could still do with a part time job, but I have gotten used to freelance ups and downs now!

I read at the beginning of this year that you’d received interest in your ‘Mobile Revolution’ Russian Dolls you made for your final degree show. Have there been any developments with producing these? It’s a tricky thing. I never intended for the phone nesting doll to get manufactured. It was always more of a ‘conceptual model’ – an illustration for how technology has evolved. I looked into possible ways of producing it on a larger scale, but I have more or less decided not to peruse that one further. However, I am certainly considering looking into larger scale production for future projects. I have always had an interest in product design and having produced a pop up card for the Design Museum in London it has whet my appetite for working in this way.

What are you currently working on? I am just returning from a European Inter-railing trip which was good fun and very inspiring. I’m working on more editorial work at the moment and a couple of exhibitions of my work in agencies in London as well as preparations for a festival in the summer. I’m hoping to work on some more personal work this summer too.

To see more of Kyle’s impressive work visit his website Kyle Bean.

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