Brian Griffin - Black Country DaDa

Brian Griffin is a photographer who studied in the university of Manchester Polytechnic and graduated in 1972. After this he moved to London where he started his career around the 1980's doing photography in the music industry working with people such as Iggy Pop and Depeche Mode.

Even though Brian has not from got A product design background he did have some insight which I was able to take away from the talk. He spoke about his style of photography which he developed called corporate photography, this included an office as the back drop and the actor was a business person. He spoke about how he became successful because of this and from it I took away the technique of how you have got to be different within your field to stand out from the other people and get to the top.

Brian also did quite a lot of work with different artists like Depeche mode and Iggy Pop but he had also done some work with actors from cast of Star Wars. He didn’t touch upon it in his talk but from my point of view this can all be seen as networking and building a circle of artists and actors. Networking allows you to get your name out there and may allow you to work with new people which in turn brings in more business. This can be applied to me too as I have done live projects through my time at the university as in my first year I did work with Evoke Creative and will also be working with a company for my major project. If by the end of it they like my work it may lead to other possibilities in the future as they have worked with me before.

Overall the talk helped me realise that if I am to do any kind of work it needs to stand out from what other people are doing as this would be my competition this would all allow me to develop my portfolio which may help me in the future in getting jobs and showing off my work. Not only that but I need to make sure I am making connections within the deign world as this may allow me to gain experience with new people.