Intro:
23 year old Jay Vaz is a designer from London now based in Leeds. His practise mainly involves album artwork, posters, and broader music based projects, but he is more recently getting involved with directing videos, fashion collaborations, and branding projects with his studio The Mannequin Collective.
Jay’s vibrant visual work is heavily influenced by the music both he and his father listened to growing up. Shown through his interesting use of graphic notation, he has an interesting way of combining image and sound. This combination takes the form of beautiful colour combinations, texture, and image all encompassed by an overall nostalgic feeling.
The Mannequin Collective has been in the works for 4 years, and also includes designers Lawrie Miller, Hugo Inglis, and Oliver Meeke. Specialising in design, videography, motion graphics, and art direction, the creative studio has produced some amazing visuals for huge clients like SONY and Yussef Dayes.
Rationale:
After graduating from the graphic design course at Leeds Arts University, Jay Vaz started working freelance and working on The Mannequin Collective. Due to his obvious skill and capabilities as a designer, he’s worked with some of my personal dream clients, Blue Note Records for example. Jay art directed the entirety of Blue Note: ReImagined. Being a massive fan of Reid Miles and Blue Note Records, I was both immensely jealous and excited to see the project going ahead.
I’m in the same position that Jay was 4 years ago. In second year, trying to build a portfolio, thinking about what I want to do after I graduate. If I can come close to what Jay has achieved in the next four years I’ll be proud of myself. I really enjoy working to produce visuals for anything music related, and seeing Jay make a career out of this is really inspiring. The fact that he’s also running a studio at this early stage in his career is something that I didn’t even think was possible - but would love to do.
Interview:
You've got a really strong visual style and your art is very recognisable. Do you think it's more beneficial to develop your own style or to be able to adapt to different projects?
Personally, as a freelancer it's definitely important to be able to adapt to a variety of projects. Recently, I’ve tried to expand my practise as much as possible - where I’ve been directing music videos, working on fashion collaborations and more branding projects. It’s been a lot of fun! and that for me, is extremely important, where I love my job even more when each day is varied and exciting.
If you want to work for a studio, having your own visual style isn’t essential. Having interesting ideas, being a good listener & being organised definitely is. It seems to be my ideas themselves that I get commissioned for from bigger clients and brands, however having somewhat of my own style has benefited me to gain more commissions in the music industry for artwork covers.
Do you think it's more beneficial to be in a bigger city like London in terms of work?
After graduating from LAU, we decided to stay in Leeds for 2 more years. A huge pro staying in Leeds for us, was being offered a free studio space, and rent/living costs are half the price of London. This benefited us creatively as there’s less financial stress; for our first year of freelancing, this was pretty essential. It provided us breathing space to work on a few personal projects that has helped us to gain bigger commissioned projects and additionally provided us with more social time to finish work early and relax on the weekends!
There’s without a doubt more opportunity in London if you want to work in a studio, however there’s definitely an emerging creative scene up north that’s looking to be an extremely exciting movement. For us, it has been great building up what we’re doing in Leeds, where we are now looking to take our adventures to Lisbon, Berlin & London in August. (Well, depending on Covid).
I understand that COVID has probably affected your physical way of working, but how has it affected you creatively? Have you struggled working from home, and do you have any tips on how to stay motivated?
Before having a studio space we had 4 months working from home when we first started out. Which initially was great, but the novelty begins to wear out when it’s difficult to differentiate social and work time. So, we felt semi prepared for this lockdown haha. My biggest tip would be to not put too much pressure on yourself during an extremely stressful, and unusual situation like this! Luckily we’ve been able to drive to loads of lovely places in Yorkshire, which has been great to give our eyes a break. Having structure to the day helps a lot, make sure you’re taking breaks and early morning walks before working always helps!
We also started a project called “Dreaming Vinyl” during lockdown. Me and Lawrie (who I run the collective and live with) have been chiselling into this idea since 2nd Year off uni. We’ve been super motivated to get this project out, as the goal is to create an art/music discovery platform that supports underground artists, where we also have ideas to raise money for charity. The idea of helping like-minded creatives has definitely been a fuel to motivate us during a time like this!
Finally, Talk to people that have the same vision as you; Talk about ideas, future goals, get feedback on current work etc!
Your work for Blue Note: Reimagined is amazing. I'm a massive fan of Blue Note and Reid Miles, so it was like a dream project - but you executed it brilliantly. How did you approach that brief? Could you talk me through your ideas and process?
Ah glad we share a mutual loving for Reid Miles – one of my biggest inspirations! The brief was to create an identity that represented the old classic Blue Note releases, and the current new wave of jazz. As I was art directing the whole project, I considered a lot of different aspects at the beginning of the project. For example how it was going to be packaged, how all the singles were going to correlate with the main cover, and even how it was going to be communicated via socials.
My process started by sketching over 100 different ideas and alternative routes it could go down. There was one particular idea I liked in my sketchbook, where I was visualising the music through shapes and linear patterns. This then developed into an abstract notation music sheet, which worked really well as I could visualise the old and new tracks in one combined piece of art. For socials, we created visualisers for each re:imagined track, with the notations animating in time with the music. I wanted the overall branding & identity to have a classic feel to it, whilst representing the expressive, yet energetic tone that jazz as a whole creates.
One of the most time consuming stages was actually trying to pitch the idea. I wanted to make this concept stand out the most as it was by far my favourite out of all the other designs I created for the project; where it was also difficult as the label wasn’t quite sold on the idea in its initial stages.
What made you want to start The Mannequin Collective so early on in your career? Is collaboration the key to success? Also, have you run into any problems whilst running your own studio?
I always wanted to run a studio so I had all the branding and some rough project ideas ready when I was in college haha. I completely forgot about all of this work, until I came to Leeds and it all happened really naturally! The team consists of 6 members, where we met at uni and became really close friends. We were all into the same music taste, art, hobbies & interests. In our 1st year of uni we had 4 of 5 projects that we wanted to collaborate on. This ranged from directing our first music video, to being flown out to Croatia to film all the branded content for Outlook & Dimensions Festival. We realised we had a lot of polished projects that were receiving good feedback, so it then felt right to put this all under a collaborated project name, which worked perfectly when I had all these ideas and logos that were sketched out previously.
Collaboration was extremely essential! I learnt pretty much all the technical skills I know, through members in the mannequin team, and as a group we were learning and growing so much from each other. The problem we had was when we finished uni, having half the team in London and half the team in Leeds. However, overall it’s worked out well as all the video content and equipment is in London and then Lawrie and myself handle all the design and animation work in Leeds!
Your work is very nostalgic in style and very music orientated, but what visually inspires you?
Films for sure! I’m working my way through all the A24 movies and they are all individually amazing in their own way. Also, I’ve always been inspired by my family’s Goan heritage. The colour palettes, intricate architecture, and cuisine...it’s all visually stunning!
What would you say is the most effective way of booking clients/ getting your name out there? Social media, word of mouth - which is more beneficial?
Social media is one hell of a powerful tool, but it definitely has its disadvantages. It’s difficult to really see someone's true character on a digital platform - I found it really beneficial meeting a lot of clients in person, which helped a lot, as it led me to gaining a lot of work through word of mouth.
Social media however was the catalyst in allowing me to pursue freelancing full time. Instagram helped me to receive press from magazines that massively promoted my work into some dream clients.
It’s difficult to say which medium is the most beneficial - as it definitely depends on the person. Some people thrive promoting themselves in person, however some people may be more timid and rather use digital methods to grab clients attention. Alternatively some creatives may feel comfortable using tools such as TikTok to make their work go viral!
Definitely use the tools that you feel comfortable with but also be smart! Try and grab people's attention that uses unconventional methods to stand out – but yeah just have fun with what you’re doing and all these things come shortly after! :)
Reflection:
I found Jay’s answers to my questions extremely insightful. Thankfully, he definitely gave me some things to think about in terms of my own design practise and career development.
I’ve always wondered what I should be focussing on more - developing a strong unique style or broadening my list of skills. Jay’s response to my question made me realise that you don’t need a hyper-stylized look to all of your work to be a good designer. What’s more important is that you have good ideas, you listen to others, and you’re always teaching yourself new skills.
Similarly with social media, Jay says that it is a powerful tool but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of talking to a client face to face. I definitely learnt this within my responsive module - where I was nervous to conduct a Zoom interview with my client but afterwards realised the benefits that it gave my process. Social media is important and it can gain you commision work within the music industry, however, it’s important to not forget to focus on your own development as a designer first.
I’ve also been wondering about where I’m going to move after I graduate from Uni. Where I’m from is quite small and has a non-existent design scene so that’s not on the cards for me. I’m also not really a fan of London, I’ve always found it to be quite a lonely place despite its size but for a long time I told myself that I would have to deal with that in order to get a successful job. This is what made me ask Jay about his experience, as he’s been in both London and Leeds for extended periods of time. I am aware that the North has a really exciting emerging design scene but I do think that I would like to go somewhere a bit further. Hearing that Jay has been working in Leeds for the past couple of years and that’s allowed him to hopefully branch out to amazing cities like Lisbon and Berlin is really inspiring.
Furthermore, I’ve been struggling to stay creative and motivated during lockdown, so I was really eager to ask Jay about what he’s been doing to keep working over the pandemic. His response was really positive and uplifting. It reminded me to not put too much pressure on myself during this difficult time. I definitely needed a reminder to be taking more breaks and getting outside.
Jay also heavily encouraged collaboration and talking with those around you. I often find that my design process is quite solitary, especially in lockdown. But, I live with two other graphic designers! Jay has reminded me of the amazing benefits of discussing ideas and goals and receiving genuine feedback, which isn;t surprising as he lives with his co-founder of The Mannequin Collective, Laurie!
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