Meet the team: Sam

By John / Staff /

He may look 12 years old, but behind that baby face is someone with a keen design eye, a dress sense like Finch from American Pie and an unhealthy appetite for all things orange flavoured. Orangina, Terry’s Chocolate Orange and actual oranges can often be seen cluttering his desk. Sam really loves photography and at weekends often hunts around charity shops to increase his ever expanding collection of vintage cameras. This love for cameras can be traced back to an old school project where he created a trailer for a camera based horror film. For some reason he decided against showing this in his portfolio when he first joined.

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What’s your job?

Designer and Photographer.

So what do you actually do everyday?

I normally tell people I do drawing for a living, but in reality it’s much more than that. My day-to-day mostly consists of designing various things from websites to brochure layouts, sketching logos to photo taking. There is also a lot of time spent racking my brain to make sure the client brief is being met in a way that looks awesome and works well.

Give us a song that describes you?

Man of Simple Pleasures – Kasabian

What keeps you motivated?

The constant urge to take better photos, the impatience to make better designs and strong orange squash.

Tell us your favourites: music, TV shows, films?

My music taste is broad. Ranging from heavy bass beats to riff town rock songs, chilled plinky plonky to hard hip hop. The design studio gets to experience this vast range on a daily basis. However, there are a few artists I always end up listening to. Arctic Monkeys for Alex Turner’s consistent northern-ness, Mura Masa for the most unique production I have heard in ages, and Mumford & Sons for a good ol’ modern day foot stomp.

What are your most recent discoveries? Any tv-shows, podcasts, blogs or books we should be keeping our eyes on?

Well apart from discovering that dropping your camera bag is an expensive mistake… I’ve been playing a game on Xbox One recently called Quantum Break, which has a mini series running alongside and the decisions you make in the game affect which parts you watch of the series, which is pretty cool. I have also been dabbling in the use of Monzo, a new type of banking app that’s still in development, that helps you track your spending and budgets. It seems like a really clever idea and I can’t wait to see how it develops in the next year or so. Also plus points to their design and UX/UI, it is on point!

You’ve got a time machine, where would you go first?

I’d jump forward to the exact point when commercial hovering cars have been invented, we have been promised them for so long in the movies, and a V8 hover car would be awesome!

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Image above: Young Sam as a Pokémon trainer.

Tell us something you wish clients knew?

White space is your friend, giving design elements room to breath is nothing to be afraid of.

Team of choice?

I support my legs because my legs support me.

What is one guilty pleasure you enjoy too much to give up?

I do love a bit of University Challenge. 98% of the time I have no idea what is going on, but when you get a question right it feels good!

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Your best impression?

My impressions/accents can be pretty ropey and any that I can do are only a few words, however I can say ‘How, now, brown cow’ in a Northern Irish accent pretty well.

What’s your earliest creative memory?

I remember being ecstatic one Christmas when I was about 8, after receiving an A3 sketch pad and thinking it was the biggest bit of paper ever. I immediately sat in front of the fish tank and drew my pet goldfish, Goldeen. RIP mate.

Cats or dogs?

I was always a cat person, up until 3 years ago when my parents got little Bella, the Border Terrier/Jack Russell cross, and how can you not like that little face! So I’d say I am a cat and dog person now.

What do you wish you had known 5 years ago?

Like my fellow beardless friend, Brad, I wish I hadn’t got my hopes up about having a luscious face jungle.

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What are the 3 things you’d take to a desert island and why?

A camera with unlimited film/memory, a crate of ice cold Corona with lime (the only way to drink it), and a speaker to blast my music.

Sam fails to realise he actually needs something to play music to use the speaker and while the memory is unlimited on his camera, the battery isn’t!

If you had a tagline, what would it be?

Well I started saying ‘Self commendation is the key to success’ as a joke, but the more I say it the more it kind of becomes true.

If you could give the people reading one piece of advice, what would it be?

Don’t stress, everything will be fine.

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