An Interview for Majestart

I did an interview not long ago for the super cool French website, Majestart. You can read the full thing over here although it’s in French, and Google translate makes me say funny things. So here it is in English!

1. Hi Jonathan! To start with, can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?

Hi! My name is Jonathan Ogden, I’m a christian, web designer, graphic designer and musician from Manchester, UK. I’m currently working as a full time web designer for a christian charity here in Manchester called The Message Trust, and I’m loving it!

2. Briefly, can you tell us when you started becoming passionate about creativity and the life journey you’ve been on since then?

I’ve always enjoyed doing creative things, drawing as a child, doing short films, animations etc. It was during a graphic design course at college that I really got a passion for design, and seeing the kind of work other designers did really inspired me. I had no idea people were creating these kind of great designs, and I wanted to get involved. I got really into it and started doing graphic design and web design, set up my own website and doing designs for friends, family and personal projects. My portfolio ended up getting me the web design job I’m in now!

3. Can you tell us more about the typographic verses project website? What is the vision behind it, how did it start and what are you hoping from it ?

Typographic Verses was started really quickly. One lunch break I decided I wanted to do something different from my web designs so I started making some typography posters for some of my favourite verses. Often just verses I had read and thought “they would make great posters!”. I looked around for some websites that had some nice posters of bible verses, but couldn’t find any, so I set up a quick Tumblr site, picked a name for the site and uploaded a couple of designs. It got quite a bit of attention and lots of people liking the designs and following the blog and since then I’ve opened it up to allow other designers to submit designs. It’s been great to see some really high quality designs sent in.

My aim is to have prints for sale soon, and I just put up the first print in the online store. People buy typographic posters of phrases that don’t mean anything or of the alphabet, so I thought it would be great to combine typographic designs with words that are “living and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12).

4. You wrote on your website «I see a lot of the creative stuff I do as a form of worship and it’s the best motivation ever ». Can you expand on that ?

I believe God created us in His image, and created us with the ability to create things. I find it really motivating that when we design things, we’re doing a small version of what God was doing when He made everything, when he sat back and said “it is good”. God is the best designer and can provide the best inspiration. I like to see design as a way of honouring God and the creativity that he gave us.

5. Can you tell us a bit about The Message Trust you work for ? What is it, what do they stand for and what do they do ? How is it working for them ?

The Message Trust is a great christian organisation, which aims to spread the gospel to young people in the UK. They do that through bands that go into schools, courses in prisons, drama groups, a youth training scheme and something called ‘Eden’ which sends people into some of the poorest / toughest areas in the UK to go and live out the gospel in the community. I love working for them, it’s a great place to work in and we actually have prayer and worship every morning as part of the work day! There’s not many places you get to do that! I work for the creative team which acts like a mini design studio. 75% of the work we do is for The Message, doing websites, videos, and print materials for the bands and all the other areas, the other 25% of what we do is external work with clients. We have two graphic designers, a video guy and I do web design, working alongside a web developer who handles most of the technical stuff.

6. Could you tell us about a few of your influences as an artist/designer ? Who are some of your heroes ?

Some of my favourite designers are Jez Burrows, Mikey Burton and Ed Nacional. It might be a bit weird that they’re all illustrators, and I don’t really do illustration, but I’m a huge fan of minimal designs with simple shapes and great colours and their stuff really inspires me. As for web designers, I love the work of Orman Clark, Regina Casaleggio and Dave Ruiz.

7. What is your long-term vision ? Some of your dreams ? What are some of your life-goals ?

I don’t really have big ambitions. I’d like to keep doing design, and keep loving what I do. I’d love to get into designing more music-related things like tour posters and album art. One day I’d maybe like to go freelance, but that’s a long long way off. I’m loving working at The Message and I can see myself being there for a long time, if I can! But really, all my design stuff is secondary to my life as a christian which is far more important to me. I’d rather be known as a great man of God or a great worshipper than as a great designer.

8. In french-speaking countries, Christians engaging properly with the importance of graphic design and the arts in general is something relatively new. How is it in the UK ? Is there a better understanding of the importance of the arts in church and christianity ?

It’s improving, I think. There’s a lot of great christian organisations that really understand design and are putting out loads of great things. I think there’s a lot of people that want their design to just be relevant, rather than cutting edge. I’d like to see more organisations taking risks and be willing to do some crazy things with design, rather than just trying to make things look cool by making it look like what everyone else is doing!

9. Do you see a big difference between your christian and secular work or do you see it all as a whole?

I see it as a whole really. Design is design, whatever the client. I do the same process for whatever I’m doing.

10. What is the vision behind your work and artwork ? What do you get out of it on a personal level ? What do you enjoy most in your job?

I think design is a way of communicating something. Clients want to communicate a message or promote a product in the best and most effective way possible and it’s our job to be a problem solver and come up with a great solution. I think if you believe in what the client is trying to communicate, it helps you to want to do the best design you can. If you’re behind what they’re trying to do and if you’re excited by the idea I think you get a lot more out of it, and so does the client! It’s also a lot of fun to design something that you know looks great. I guess it relates back again to God in Genesis when he looked at the Earth and said ‘it was good’, it’s a nice feeling to look back at your finished design and know you did a good job.

11. Can you tell us 5 artists/books/movies/bands that have inspired you and that you’d recommend?

I’ve been reading the first issue of ‘The Manual’ which I recommend for any web designer, it’s really inspiring and challenging. It makes you think more about what the web is and the bigger picture of what the web could be. It’s nice to come away from your screen and read a book about what the web could be, it feels like you’re removing yourself from the web for a while and thinking ‘are we doing it right?’. Musically, I’ve been loving Bon Iver, Local Natives, Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Stevens. Check them out.

12. Tell us about your other passion : music. What are your current projects and can you tell us more about them? Which bands would you say have influenced you?

As well as designing things, I write songs! I felt really strongly that God was calling me to write worship songs with a new sound that doesn’t sound like most worship songs at the moment. I love listening to new music and music that’s really creative and different, and it’s my goal to try and write songs that are worship songs while being really different and creative musically. In August I released an album under the name ‘Rivers & Robots’ which is my attempt to try and do this. I had good fun writing and recording it, and designing the website and album art. Musically, I want it to be a mix of folk and electronic music, which don’t generally go together, but it makes an interesting combination! I listen to loads of different styles and bands that probably influence me, specifically those mentioned above, plus Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Jónsi and others.

13. What’s this other obsession of yours : tea ?

Haha! I’m definitely a big fan of tea, nothing fancy, just plain old tea. If I’ve made it to mid-day without at least 2 cups of tea, something is wrong. I think I drive my co-workers a little bit crazy with the amount of tea I drink.

14. What are your current projects that get you excited?

I’m really excited about the future of Typographic Verses as I start to get some prints done. I’d also like to take my music project further and start doing some live shows and really promoting the album. I’m already itching to do another album but it’s too soon I think. I’m also working on a new web project at work that I’m super happy with how it’s looking, and there’s a website we’re going to do for the youth work training scheme called Genetik which we want to do some crazy things with! We should be working on that later this year.

15. Have you ever been to France, Belgium or Switzerland?

I’ve been to france a few times for holidays. I spent two weeks there this year around the Carcassonne area. It was a beautiful area. I also did a small tour around Europe with my family a few years ago, we did a short stop in Geneva then and loved it! I’m a big fan of travelling and always like seeing different cultures.

16. Anything else to end up the interview with?

Thanks for having me on here! Hopefully these answers are helpful!

Thanks to Jeremie Claeys for doing the interview!

Posted on December 4, 2011 by admin

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