James victor e posters in psychology

Ian Paget: I read that when you was younger, you aimed to be the best poster designer on the planet. And that was clearly your north star for a long time. How did having a goal like that early on in your career impact your career in life?

James Victore: What I was doing at that time, and I didn't know it at the time, but what I was doing at the time was I was setting a purpose for my life and for my work. And it was something that I would work towards and it wasn't important ... When you have a set purpose, what happens is anything outside of that purpose falls away. So what I did kind of fortunately and unfortunately was I set that as my purpose. And I actually got pretty damn close. I mean, there are other people who are fantastic from my generation and from before, fantastic poster designers and nobody ... It's like being the fastest man on the planet. You're the fastest man on the planet for, like, a week.

But the important thing is that I set a purpose for my work. And I think, when you have a purpose, then your work is driven and your work has meaning and the work just improves. I think what most people don't do is set a purpose. When I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts, I'd say, "What do you guys want? When you get out of school, what do you want?" And they all usually say they'd like a job. And I'm like, "Well, could you be more specific? Because you're going to get a fucking job, but then you're going to be stuck and you're going to hate it."

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's very much the reason why I wanted to ask you the question because I think having that goal early on, whether that was intentional or not, I think it makes a big difference because I've done it myself. I mean, it wasn't intentional at the beginning, but I've read a couple of books that have given a bit more clarity, but I find the moment that

Lesson Info

What is "Success"?

talk about in three phases. What is success? And we're talking about yourself in your work and in this business in graphic design and post resigned so in yourself. So when I was a kid, I was graduating high school, got good grades by essentially not trying very hard. Took the S A. T s had really good s a t scores. Although my verbal skills were higher than my math skills and the schools that I wanted, the school that I wanted likes that the other way around. I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. My life would be very different if I went to the Air Force Academy. Um um So I floundered for a while, and there were two jobs that were presented to me. These are good options if you're not going to college. And one waas. I was in a hometown where there was a nursing school and the other one, the next town over, had a penitentiary called Dannemora State Prison. Al Capone was there for a while. Um, Ted Bundy was there, um, these were presented as options to me for one reason why, Why? They w...

ere good jobs, which means what they paid. And I'm thinking, of course, now I look back and I'm like, Wow, it's pretty ballsy of you to be 18 years old and have that thought. And I thought, But I don't feel like a nurse. And I don't feel like a prison guard. Why would I do that? And the answer was, It's a good job. It pays. Well, when we were talking about the cliche, that's one of the cliches to get out of high school. What do I do now? Dad, will you get a job? Could you be more specific? Yes. One that pays well, you know, and then they'll give you the math. Like, Okay, whatever your rent is, your paycheck has to be. I don't even know what the math is anymore. Because this is This is this is my This is my math now, OK, so whatever I need to make basically is, um, the square root of my truck needs snow tires, and I'm gonna have a new baby multiplied by, Um uh

Lesson Info

Let's Start Unlearning

Awesome hey you guys out in tv land so sorry you're not here this is very groovy beautiful people in this audience handpicked we checked him for weapons it's awesome first day of class guys like did you get like like new school clothes maybe you got like new sneakers anyway new sneakers no I got I got a lunch box my mom my mom my mom my mom bought it for me it's got g I joe on it it's kind of cool I'll show it to you later I swear so, um I'm from brooklyn, new york and we always say how tio like chris mentioned I'm james victoria um and any way you slice it I'm james victoria weigh all have like ats and hashtags stuff in front of our names george orwell is coming true nineteen eighty four is coming true it's crazy I prefer this spelling of my name now I put an explanation point over it because if you can put a hashtag in front of it why can't you put something after it? So I'm putting an explanation point after it you can reach me through twitter through instagram and that is my brand ...

I have this crazy story. I had this amazing assistant amazing in turn this summer, and I won't tell you where she is from the water in her name is or anything because I'm not important, but she told me this story about when she was a kid. She wanted to be an artist, she wanted to be a designer. So what she did was in her room, on the wall. She drew the most beautiful picture she could of her parents. She wanted to show them how much she loved them, and she wanted to show them her craft. She brought her parents in and guess what they did. They freaked out. They freaked out. You did what on my what? Brian, could you imagine that if you guys hadn't had any experiences like this been told you can't be creative, be told, don't do that even professionally. Mohr right? Crazy to have your dreams squashed right in front of you, right? So we have to unlearn

Victore’s early professional work was not, however, very expressive. At 24 he was freelancing for virtually every publisher in New York designing Baconesque covers and jackets – big titles, big author by-lines, and small bland illustrations.

James victor e posters in psychology

‘All of a sudden, after seeing the Tomaszewski stuff,’ he says, ‘I realised that I had my own sense of placement, my own sense of design, my own sense of humour, and I wanted to apply this to my commercial work.’ The almost immediate seismic shift in his method shocked his regular clients who expected fairly tight conventional design.

Instead Victore began to draw letterforms (even if they were available as typefaces), simplify images, and most importantly he depended almost entirely on concepts rather than decoration and ornament.

The response was underwhelming.

‘I was living on kill fees,’ he recalls. ‘My workload plummeted because nobody was interested in it. Though it was an extremely important experimental time, it took a long time f