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/xtreme magazine

quark, strangeness & charm

After moving to London in 1996 and spending a year on the dole I did a government ‘Training For Work’ course just to get the extra fifteen quid a week and keep the social quiet. The course taught the basics in QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Illustrator which I learned so fast that after it was completed I was offered a job there teaching. I declined and, after a short spell at a cycling magazine, ended up working for a small company near Victoria station that produced pocket guides for tourists to use around London.
       ‘Loaded’ and other lads mags were flourishing so the managing director thought he would try his luck in consumer magazines too and put a small team together to produce an extreme sports magazine. My knowledge of extreme sports was non-existent, and of type and layout minimal, but this was the first time that I got complete control over the visual language of a magazine and the perfect opportunity to start a lifetime of experimentation in print.

Issue One cover with Pantone 804
Issue Two cover with metallic gold special

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jason statham's flip flops

The job as Art Director involves the commissioning and briefing of photographers and models for any fashion pages within a magazine. I have always enjoyed working with great photographers and designing the thematic elements of these pages. Editorial design freedom is always stymied by the designer having to fit too much copy into too small a space, but fashion features are one of the rare times that this is not an issue. These pages are usually just beautiful full bleed photos with captions telling the reader what is being worn by the models.

      This shoots 29 year old male model was a friend of one of the sales executives so we got him cheap whilst he was still working part-time as a market trader selling fake perfumes. He had just been hired for the role of ‘Bacon’ in Guy Ritchie’s first film ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels‘ so Statham spent much of his downtime on our studio set learning lines from his script.
      Years later with him a global superstar I find it funny that we had him fucking around with a pair of flip-flops on his hands. This set of test polaroids that I used as roughs for the page layouts is an interesting footnote in his career.

Fashion opener
Summer fashion polaroid #1
Summer fashion polaroid #2
Summer fashion polaroid #3
Summer fashion polaroid #4
Summer fashion polaroid #5

layouts & illustrations

Upfront single
Health single
Health single
Insane Sk8
Terry Hall feature
Diving single
Basquait homage (gouaché & chalk)
Health spread with pen and ink illustration
Snowboard feature
Snowboard feature
Porn 'art' exhibition feature
Bike tech [photo: Geoff Waugh]

Herringfleet Mill

Back when I was a kid before I discovered punk rock, the family drove to this wonderful place a lot. I would chase grasshoppers and throw flea darts at my brother, dad birdwatched across the wetlands through his U-boat binoculars and mum would sit down and rest after carrying the picnic all the way from the car through the woods, over stiles and down to the riverside on her own. There was usually a whole roast chicken on a plate wrapped in tin foil and we all had our own plates and cutlery too.

HerringfleetWindmill

Snape Maltings

The fact that a world famous homosexual composer of opera came from my home town frequently gives me pleasure and optimism. Like The Borough’s Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten also sought solace from all the wagging tongues and pointed fingers.
In 1966 he found it just up the river Alde at Snape in a disused maltings complex that within a year he had expensively converted into a purpose-built concert hall in which he and his lover, singer Peter Peers, could hang out in privacy whilst rehearsing, developing and performing new works. The hugely popular Aldeburgh festival has been held here since its completion in 1967.

SnapeMaltingsNewScan