Jake Tilson We received a great response from Jake Tilson, an influential graphic designer, publisher and author, who created Atlas magazine, a collaborative publication displaying art in a refreshing way in the late 1980’s. Throughout Jake’s career he has embraced the developing technological world and gave us a great insight to how digital media has changed the way he works as a designer. Today Jake uses social media a great deal in his projects, he spoke of social networking as a natural way to extend the ideas and content of a project. It stems from why he wanted to create magazines in the first place, which is all about social media, socialising and sharing ideas. “I treat every correspondence as a piece of art”. As one of the first people to make and design websites in the UK, always embracing new technology has allowed Jake to expand his practice. He expresses his interest in how the current methods of printing or reproduction reflect the age they were produced in. Therefore he was a keen user of Gestetmer printers at school, early photocopiers in the 1970’s and 80’s, colour laser copiers, then fax machines, copy cameras, typesetting machines, Super8 film, Video 8, Hi8 video, 35mm print film, rubber stamps, early dot matrix computers and finally the Macintosh.
Now completely fluid with Macs Jake has managed to fully incorporate and reintroduce more analogue ways of working alongside the technology. “There is nothing more exciting than getting up in the morning and working on a project that you love. I know it’s a good project if I find myself getting anxious by later afternoon – wishing the day could be longer, so I could work longer – my dream is a 72 hour day.”
Jake’s work showcases a great balance between digital and print media. We asked his opinion on the future for printed publications; “The future for printed publications, such as text books, will migrate to tablets, whereas ‘bookish books’ will flourish. However there are some grey areas, such as novels as books. Whereby we expect people to convert to tablets, but many people still like novels as books – there is nothing quite like holding 400 pages of a novel in one had as you read the last two pages, the end of the book becomes a physical experience. A tablet can’t do this. Although what tablets ‘can’ do is extraordinary!”
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