This talk was absolutely one of the best, funniest, top notch artist talks I've ever been to. Barnbrook has so much personality which is evident in his work. It was so much better than I thought it would be because even though I was familiar with Barnbrook's work, for some reason I still expected him to be clean-cut, graphic designer cliche, but he was awesome. Anti-Consumerist, pro artist and changing the world kind of guy. (I also appreciated that he talked about Bowie a lot)
A lot of his work is pretty controversial, but that's good because he has something to say.
He talked a great deal about not being a hypocrite. If you're going to be anti-consumerist when a big company calls you and asks you to do some work for them you've got to decide whether it's really going to benefit you to take on the work.
You should stay true to your identity and working style, even if selling out could give you a lot of cash.
Political statements through art should be out on the street. You can stick your stuff out there, you might have friends willing to help you out too by wearing high-vis jackets or sneakily using their place of employment to help get the message across.
Something I found interesting was David Bowie's ★ is an image because it's universal and recognisable to everyone (along with other symbolic images within the album art). It relates to emoji's and the kind of universal language of emoticons in todays culture. A quote from William Burroughs was mentioned I don't remember it exactly but it was something along the lines of writing should be a mixture of hieroglyphics and airport signs
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