Every month Brave Island runs a Young Creative of the Month fund, where we spotlight a local young creative with an interview on our blog, and support them with funding of £100. For April, it’s graphic designer Mitchell Wright. This fund launches at the beginning of every month, you can apply to be Young Creative of the Month for May here.
Please can you tell us about your creative practice?
My creative practice combines two of my hobbies, graphic design and record collecting. One of the main reasons I enjoy collecting is so that I can have the physical album in my hand and show support towards the artist, but I also collect as a way of appreciating the artistic direction that went into each LP. Creative focus can include the layout, photos, and fonts used on the vinyl sleeve, as well as the colour choices used on the record itself. All these decisions are made by the artist, and as much as the music is the main focus when purchasing a record, the aesthetics are just as important. So, with this in mind, I decided that I wanted to share the visual elements of the records with fellow collectors and anyone passionate about music, all on one page. To start with I pick an album at random in my collection, then proceed to take photographs of the packaging and discs. Using illustrative software, I am then able to place all the photos in a collage format, incorporating real-life imagery that refers to a song or the overall theme of the album. Once edited to a standard I am satisfied with, I then upload the image to my Instagram page.
Where did your love of vinyl come from?
I have always been a lover of music; I enjoy all different types of genres and there isn’t a song I won’t listen to. Vinyl on the other hand has been a fairly recent passion. On a trip to Brighton back in 2019 I visited HMV and bought my very first record – The Killers debut album ‘Hot Fuss’ which includes the world-renowned single ‘Mr. Brightside’. I didn’t even have a record player at the time, so it was mainly used as a display piece, that was until lockdown happened in 2020 when I bought my first record player (and a couple more records to go along with it). Because everyone was stuck at home, vinyl became my way of getting out of boredom, and being able to order them online to be delivered straight to my door made collecting very easy and so then 2 records turned into 4, and so on. Before I knew it, I had a vast collection and to this day, I have accumulated 138 records (and counting). My love for collecting vinyl has grown since 2020, and over the years I have found more reasons why. The bright colours and patterns that can now be pressed on vinyl are much more advanced than how they were back in the day, and as much as I enjoy the standard black discs, a coloured pressing is always exciting. There is also a sentimental element to my love of vinyl, as I’m lucky to have records passed down to me from family members so that I can enjoy the music they all love. Overall, the vinyl world is such a joyful place, and would recommend it to everybody!
What drew you to this particular style for your art?
Having a GCSE and A Level in graphic design I have been exposed to a vast collection of artistic styles and designs over the years, but one that has always stuck with me is the work of American collage artist and musician Joe Castro aka ‘Mighty Joe Castro’. I take inspiration from his work as he is always overlapping and blending images that look out of place. I have always loved the collage style of art, whether that’s on a computer or in physical form by tearing images and words out of magazines and sticking them on a page, and so I thought this would be my chosen method when creating the designs for my page. The chaos and uniqueness of each collage make them appealing to me as not one will ever be the same. To improve my Instagram page, I have also started to design album posters that are inspired by various movie posters. Generally, I plan to continue this and eventually branch out to create other illustrations, maybe one day working with local record stores or ones further afield to create branded content for them, or even setting up an online shop for people to purchase prints of my work.
Where can people find your work if they’d like to support you?
People can visit my Instagram page here: nostalgialane_records
If people want to get in contact for anything vinyl-related or graphic design requests my email is:
nostalgialanerecords@outlook.com
