The Captain's Blog Welcomes: Mike Barclay
Today the Captain's Blog welcomes the wonderful Mike Barclay, director and principal designer of Thumbnail Design and also my brother in law...
Above: Left, Mike Barclay and right, Wai-Lum Sung from Thumbnail Design...
Jon: So Mike, tell us a little about yourself and Thumbnail Design?
Mike: I started freelancing as an illustrator back when I was 18, just as I started studying art & design at a college in a small backwater town in North East England called Peterlee. I progressed through the traditional route of A-level at college; Foundation Course, HND and Degree at Sunderland Uni; then straight into unemployment! Ahh the creative industries in North East, bless ‘em… (cue sideways wistful look to the sky). Luckily for me, I’d trained for it! Seriously though, I’d freelanced here and there all the way through my “education”, including a pivotal year or so back home in St. John’s, so when I arrived back in the UK I had a strong portfolio of work and an interesting CV that helped me get my first full-time gig as a graphic designer at a further education college up at the ‘top’ of County Durham in a place called Consett (shudders).
I bimbled along from job to job until I became a co-director of a small design agency in Durham. After almost four years of that I was itching for a change when I got the opportunity to work for a music magazine as the senior graphic designer. It was a dream job for me as I’ve always been obsessed with music (and cars and women – anything that ruins you and costs a fortune, but that's another story entirely!). Unfortunately, and despite some great work from an even greater team, the ‘management’ weren’t up to much and it went bust in just six months. Eek: another brief spell of unemployment, only this time with a mortgage to pay.
From there (i.e. rock bottom!) I entered the damp, dark and slightly demented world of local government as the senior graphic designer at an in-house design and print facility within Sunderland City Council. Fortunately for me, my liver and what was left of my sanity, government austerity measures meant that after seven years hard work they closed our department. I got pushed into another post sending work out to external suppliers that we should’ve been doing on the mothballed equipment in the room next to me, and so after nine months of doing a job which I didn't really like (and on principle, its ethos), I took a great severance package and left the council on a ray of sunshine, with the wind in my sails and shouting abuse and profanity at the management (several much needed lunchtime pints will do that to you). However I can now proclaim that, “I recently took severance from the council so my creativity, productivity and sobriety have increased dramatically!”
But as always, when I’m not in the design studio, most of my time is spent listening to, watching or playing music, but only when permitted by my fiancé. My dream would be for this to only be interrupted by frequent trips back home to Newfoundland, the Formula 1 season and ‘that call from the guys at NASA’ (I know, I know, but surely they need cleaners, right?!). Aside from that, I am an aspiring golfer and badminton player - of which the social aspects of both are the only highlights at the moment. As well as being a fully paid up member of the Brotherhood of the Grape and would easily walk over hot coals for red wine, my time as a designer has given me an appreciation for (sorry, I meant to say ‘a desperate need of’) Glenmorangie, most beers from the Jarrow Brewing Company and a keen friendship with a certain Captain Morgan…
Jon: You grew up in Newfoundland, what was life like there?
Mike: St. John’s is a great spot. It’s truly an amazing and beautiful place, and even though I spent my formative years there and undoubtedly have a rose-tinted view of those days, I have a lot of affection for the whole province especially after having returned regularly over the years to work and visit family and friends. On a good day, it looks all brand new and when the sun shines, it shines right through me… yeah, ok, that's a Great Big Sea lyric, but it sums it up. However, when the weather closes in… you’d best batten down the hatches and keep the shovel handy (until I moved to the UK I didn’t even know it could rain ‘down’ – I definitely don't miss the horizontal rain!). Good job the people are among the best in the world – friendly, generous, creative, professional, ugly as sin – oh hang on, that last bit’s just me… AND they have more pubs per square km than any other city in the world.
Jon: I know music is a big part of your life. Who are your top three musicians and why?
Mike: Jeez…I thought you said this was s’posed to be easy? Without being REALLY predictable, its extremely hard for me to pin it down to three I’m afraid, as there are so many different acts that ‘do it’ for me: Marillion, Ray Wilson, King Crimson, RPWL, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Porcupine Tree, Spock’s Beard, District 97…and that just covers Prog! Then there’s stuff from the likes of Stanley Clarke, Huey Lewis & the News, Miles Davis, Great Big Sea, Oscar Peterson, Midnight Oil, The Hip, Paul Simon, Caro Emerald, Tom Cochrane, Norah Jones, and on and on…
Ok, as you know fine well, it's the three members of The Police: Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland and Sting. Andy is the most versatile guitarist ever, both in playing and writing, with literally every album a classic. His new band, Circa Zero, sound absolutely amazing in the clips I’ve heard. It’s so exciting, the anticipation is killing me – like being 16 again (allegedly, anticipation is half the fun…). Then there’s Stewart: the best drummer / multi-instrumentalist on earth by a long way, and he writes a mean film score too. As for Sting, he may well write some of the best lyrics in popular music (listen to The Soul Cages album… stunning!), but his bass playing is outstanding (listen to the last Police live album – makes me want to through away my bass!). There’s just something about the three of them that works; a chemistry if you will. My life changed for the better when on my 35th birthday I finally got to see them live at Twickenham… followed 10 months later by two gigs back to back in Manchester! The bucket list had just got shorter.
Jon: You play the guitar. Which guitar do you lust after the most?
Mike: After all that, it’ll be no surprise that my favourite guitar is a carbon copy of Andy Summers’ 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom that I had made by a friend of mine who is a luthier based here in the North East. Its known as a ‘relic’, as its all beat up and customized to look exactly like the real thing. It is a truly beautiful thing that sounds amazing. But there are others on my ‘lottery wish list’: A David Gilmour strat (the red one from the 80s/90s Floyd tours), a blonde Gibson Chet Atkins nylon-strung acoustic, a Parker Fly (oh go on then, I’ll have one like Adrian Belew’s!)… There are a few basses too, but in my minds eye (shouldn’t that be ear?) I can hear people yawning so we’d best move on…
Jon: I also know that you have a love of the Delorean motor car that most people will recognise from the film "Back to the Future". What is so special about that car for you?
Mike: I saw a Delorean at a car show at Memorial Stadium in St John’s back in 81/82 (sponsored by Wacky Wheatley’s stereo store of all things!) and it just blew me away. Stunning from almost every angle and so damn shiny! Then the doors… It sparked off a life-long passion for the thing but also the work of the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. I’d really like to make the pilgrimage over to Dunmurry near Belfast in Northern Ireland to see the old factory and test track (now owned and occupied by wheel and component manufacturer Montupet). Together with Kennedy Space Centre, my Nerdvana (i.e. “Is that a raging nerd-on or are you just pleased to be here?”).
Jon: What gave you the impetus for setting up Thumbnail Design?
Mike: When the council started to slowly close our department a year or so before it finally shut down completely, I decided that I didn’t want a bunch of paper-pushing bureaucrats deciding that my career was over (pour me another drink and I’ll tell you what really think!). Shortly after that epiphany, I took a phone call from an old contact asking if I was interested in designing a new magazine they were going to produce:
www.randrlife.co.uk
The whole company was started off the back of that one phone call (our first job being the R&R logo).
Jon: What design project are you working on currently?
Mike: This week we’re working on a variety of projects, including a brochure and leaflet for a local undertaker (e.g. I have grave concern about the deadline but I’m dying to get it finished so I can go and celebrate and get out of my box…), a full marketing campaign for a new olive oil company and a website for a corporate gifts company, but there are two long-running projects I’m really excited about. The first one is the Hug-In-A-Bag Halloween Charity Ball. I created the ticket / poster artwork earlier in the year, but now the time has come to pass it across a whole event. This is great fun as we’ve got to get the mascot, a cute teddy bear named Hugo, to look evil! The second one is the campaign artwork for SCARF, Sunderland City of Adelaide Recovery Foundation:
http://www.cityofadelaide1864.co.uk/
They are trying to return the ‘City of Adelaide’ ship to Sunderland where she was built almost 150 years ago. As the oldest of only three composite clipper ships survive anywhere in the world, made out of iron and teak for those who care. Experts consider her to be more important to Britain’s maritime history than the newer Cutty Sark. My family has a history of shipbuilding in Sunderland over several generations, and with the Adelaide currently sitting on a slipway in Irvine, Scotland where I was born, I feel really connected to this project!
Jon: I understand you do a lot of charity work? Would you like to tell us about it?
Mike: Yes indeed, I’ve worked for a local cancer charity for seven years now and have recently accepted the offer to become a committee member for them. I’ve had quite a few friends and relatives be affected by cancer over the years, and have in recent years had my own cancer scare, so I jumped at the chance to be able to work directly with them. They produce pamper bags for people receiving cancer treatment in hospital. My involvement started with a request from a friend if I could help out with the design of a logo… It’s kinda gone cracked ever since with me designing everything they do. We’re designing a new site right now which will be launched at the ball in October, but please check out the old one at:
www.huginabag.co.uk/
I dunno, make a donation, follow them on Facebook, offer some fundraising ideas… Gawd, I’m not selling this charity lark to well… I’m not Geldof am I? Oh well, always remember: nice guys always finish lunch.
Jon: What plans do you have for the future?
Mike: Well, in essence, we’d just like to have more and more work: as MTV once said: “Too much is never enough”. Right now, we’re looking seriously at expanding the team: we currently we have four designers covering all disciplines, including freehand and digital illustration, logo and branding, leaflet / brochure / report / magazine production, ads and websites, and we’ve recently developed our digital side to incorporate eLearning. With the steady increase of enquiries that we’re now experiencing, we expect to be adding to the team by December this year. Who knows, next year, THE WORLD Muh huh huh!
Jon: If any indie authors out there want a book cover designing, what information do you need from them and what are the costs involved?
Mike: Here’s a short list of what we require from an author when designing their book cover:
1) The artwork size required. For example, Amazon Kindle is 1000px x 1600px at 300dpi, but if the cover is to be commercially printed, we’d need to know the exact dimensions in mm for the cover, including the spine and end flaps. When prodded hard enough, the publisher or printer will supply these print specifications (often referred to simply as ‘specs’).
2) All the text (copy) that you want to appear on the cover, so things like the title, authors preferred name, end flap descriptions etc. I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people forget things like this!
3) An idea of the overall theme / tone of the book and what style you want it designed in (i.e. photographic, illustrative, just text etc). If you’ve got an idea or brief you can send us, then that's even better!
Before considering the design, it pays to read up on contemporary thinking to make sure you get everything covered… such as:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
Our pricing policy for book covers starts at £180. The author must provide implicit instructions or brief for us to follow (we will consult with the author before any work is undertaken to identify any issues or offer any alternative solutions). This includes one full set of design proofs followed by one full set of amends / alterations (further amends after that are charged at our hourly rate of £45/hr).
However, it’s important to remember that as a bespoke design service that encompasses a wide variety of disciplines and techniques, anything beyond ‘simple’ is reflected in the price. For example, a recently designed cover entitled ‘Going Solo’ cost £360, but that included 2 alternative options to choose from and had four sets of amends. Each cover is completely different so it’s impossible to have a price list. It really depends on what you want to achieve and what budget you have.
A 50% non-refundable deposit is payable by the client at the outset of any contract. This sum will be deducted from the final invoice and can be paid by cash, BACS or PayPal.
Jon: Where can people contact you?
Mike: As the brick-wrapped-letter-through-my-window approach is kinda frowned upon in these parts, and as it’s hard to find a reliable carrier pigeon, email is probably your best bet:
mike@thumbnail-design.co.uk
You can check out some assorted samples of our work at:
https://pinterest.com/thumbnaildesign...
Please keep checking for updates as we’ll be adding more samples once the drugs wear off…
Jon: A big thank you very much to Mike for spending the time to talk to the Captain's Blog...
Above: Left, Mike Barclay and right, Wai-Lum Sung from Thumbnail Design...
Jon: So Mike, tell us a little about yourself and Thumbnail Design?
Mike: I started freelancing as an illustrator back when I was 18, just as I started studying art & design at a college in a small backwater town in North East England called Peterlee. I progressed through the traditional route of A-level at college; Foundation Course, HND and Degree at Sunderland Uni; then straight into unemployment! Ahh the creative industries in North East, bless ‘em… (cue sideways wistful look to the sky). Luckily for me, I’d trained for it! Seriously though, I’d freelanced here and there all the way through my “education”, including a pivotal year or so back home in St. John’s, so when I arrived back in the UK I had a strong portfolio of work and an interesting CV that helped me get my first full-time gig as a graphic designer at a further education college up at the ‘top’ of County Durham in a place called Consett (shudders).
I bimbled along from job to job until I became a co-director of a small design agency in Durham. After almost four years of that I was itching for a change when I got the opportunity to work for a music magazine as the senior graphic designer. It was a dream job for me as I’ve always been obsessed with music (and cars and women – anything that ruins you and costs a fortune, but that's another story entirely!). Unfortunately, and despite some great work from an even greater team, the ‘management’ weren’t up to much and it went bust in just six months. Eek: another brief spell of unemployment, only this time with a mortgage to pay.
From there (i.e. rock bottom!) I entered the damp, dark and slightly demented world of local government as the senior graphic designer at an in-house design and print facility within Sunderland City Council. Fortunately for me, my liver and what was left of my sanity, government austerity measures meant that after seven years hard work they closed our department. I got pushed into another post sending work out to external suppliers that we should’ve been doing on the mothballed equipment in the room next to me, and so after nine months of doing a job which I didn't really like (and on principle, its ethos), I took a great severance package and left the council on a ray of sunshine, with the wind in my sails and shouting abuse and profanity at the management (several much needed lunchtime pints will do that to you). However I can now proclaim that, “I recently took severance from the council so my creativity, productivity and sobriety have increased dramatically!”
But as always, when I’m not in the design studio, most of my time is spent listening to, watching or playing music, but only when permitted by my fiancé. My dream would be for this to only be interrupted by frequent trips back home to Newfoundland, the Formula 1 season and ‘that call from the guys at NASA’ (I know, I know, but surely they need cleaners, right?!). Aside from that, I am an aspiring golfer and badminton player - of which the social aspects of both are the only highlights at the moment. As well as being a fully paid up member of the Brotherhood of the Grape and would easily walk over hot coals for red wine, my time as a designer has given me an appreciation for (sorry, I meant to say ‘a desperate need of’) Glenmorangie, most beers from the Jarrow Brewing Company and a keen friendship with a certain Captain Morgan…
Jon: You grew up in Newfoundland, what was life like there?
Mike: St. John’s is a great spot. It’s truly an amazing and beautiful place, and even though I spent my formative years there and undoubtedly have a rose-tinted view of those days, I have a lot of affection for the whole province especially after having returned regularly over the years to work and visit family and friends. On a good day, it looks all brand new and when the sun shines, it shines right through me… yeah, ok, that's a Great Big Sea lyric, but it sums it up. However, when the weather closes in… you’d best batten down the hatches and keep the shovel handy (until I moved to the UK I didn’t even know it could rain ‘down’ – I definitely don't miss the horizontal rain!). Good job the people are among the best in the world – friendly, generous, creative, professional, ugly as sin – oh hang on, that last bit’s just me… AND they have more pubs per square km than any other city in the world.
Jon: I know music is a big part of your life. Who are your top three musicians and why?
Mike: Jeez…I thought you said this was s’posed to be easy? Without being REALLY predictable, its extremely hard for me to pin it down to three I’m afraid, as there are so many different acts that ‘do it’ for me: Marillion, Ray Wilson, King Crimson, RPWL, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Porcupine Tree, Spock’s Beard, District 97…and that just covers Prog! Then there’s stuff from the likes of Stanley Clarke, Huey Lewis & the News, Miles Davis, Great Big Sea, Oscar Peterson, Midnight Oil, The Hip, Paul Simon, Caro Emerald, Tom Cochrane, Norah Jones, and on and on…
Ok, as you know fine well, it's the three members of The Police: Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland and Sting. Andy is the most versatile guitarist ever, both in playing and writing, with literally every album a classic. His new band, Circa Zero, sound absolutely amazing in the clips I’ve heard. It’s so exciting, the anticipation is killing me – like being 16 again (allegedly, anticipation is half the fun…). Then there’s Stewart: the best drummer / multi-instrumentalist on earth by a long way, and he writes a mean film score too. As for Sting, he may well write some of the best lyrics in popular music (listen to The Soul Cages album… stunning!), but his bass playing is outstanding (listen to the last Police live album – makes me want to through away my bass!). There’s just something about the three of them that works; a chemistry if you will. My life changed for the better when on my 35th birthday I finally got to see them live at Twickenham… followed 10 months later by two gigs back to back in Manchester! The bucket list had just got shorter.
Jon: You play the guitar. Which guitar do you lust after the most?
Mike: After all that, it’ll be no surprise that my favourite guitar is a carbon copy of Andy Summers’ 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom that I had made by a friend of mine who is a luthier based here in the North East. Its known as a ‘relic’, as its all beat up and customized to look exactly like the real thing. It is a truly beautiful thing that sounds amazing. But there are others on my ‘lottery wish list’: A David Gilmour strat (the red one from the 80s/90s Floyd tours), a blonde Gibson Chet Atkins nylon-strung acoustic, a Parker Fly (oh go on then, I’ll have one like Adrian Belew’s!)… There are a few basses too, but in my minds eye (shouldn’t that be ear?) I can hear people yawning so we’d best move on…
Jon: I also know that you have a love of the Delorean motor car that most people will recognise from the film "Back to the Future". What is so special about that car for you?
Mike: I saw a Delorean at a car show at Memorial Stadium in St John’s back in 81/82 (sponsored by Wacky Wheatley’s stereo store of all things!) and it just blew me away. Stunning from almost every angle and so damn shiny! Then the doors… It sparked off a life-long passion for the thing but also the work of the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. I’d really like to make the pilgrimage over to Dunmurry near Belfast in Northern Ireland to see the old factory and test track (now owned and occupied by wheel and component manufacturer Montupet). Together with Kennedy Space Centre, my Nerdvana (i.e. “Is that a raging nerd-on or are you just pleased to be here?”).
Jon: What gave you the impetus for setting up Thumbnail Design?
Mike: When the council started to slowly close our department a year or so before it finally shut down completely, I decided that I didn’t want a bunch of paper-pushing bureaucrats deciding that my career was over (pour me another drink and I’ll tell you what really think!). Shortly after that epiphany, I took a phone call from an old contact asking if I was interested in designing a new magazine they were going to produce:
www.randrlife.co.uk
The whole company was started off the back of that one phone call (our first job being the R&R logo).
Jon: What design project are you working on currently?
Mike: This week we’re working on a variety of projects, including a brochure and leaflet for a local undertaker (e.g. I have grave concern about the deadline but I’m dying to get it finished so I can go and celebrate and get out of my box…), a full marketing campaign for a new olive oil company and a website for a corporate gifts company, but there are two long-running projects I’m really excited about. The first one is the Hug-In-A-Bag Halloween Charity Ball. I created the ticket / poster artwork earlier in the year, but now the time has come to pass it across a whole event. This is great fun as we’ve got to get the mascot, a cute teddy bear named Hugo, to look evil! The second one is the campaign artwork for SCARF, Sunderland City of Adelaide Recovery Foundation:
http://www.cityofadelaide1864.co.uk/
They are trying to return the ‘City of Adelaide’ ship to Sunderland where she was built almost 150 years ago. As the oldest of only three composite clipper ships survive anywhere in the world, made out of iron and teak for those who care. Experts consider her to be more important to Britain’s maritime history than the newer Cutty Sark. My family has a history of shipbuilding in Sunderland over several generations, and with the Adelaide currently sitting on a slipway in Irvine, Scotland where I was born, I feel really connected to this project!
Jon: I understand you do a lot of charity work? Would you like to tell us about it?
Mike: Yes indeed, I’ve worked for a local cancer charity for seven years now and have recently accepted the offer to become a committee member for them. I’ve had quite a few friends and relatives be affected by cancer over the years, and have in recent years had my own cancer scare, so I jumped at the chance to be able to work directly with them. They produce pamper bags for people receiving cancer treatment in hospital. My involvement started with a request from a friend if I could help out with the design of a logo… It’s kinda gone cracked ever since with me designing everything they do. We’re designing a new site right now which will be launched at the ball in October, but please check out the old one at:
www.huginabag.co.uk/
I dunno, make a donation, follow them on Facebook, offer some fundraising ideas… Gawd, I’m not selling this charity lark to well… I’m not Geldof am I? Oh well, always remember: nice guys always finish lunch.
Jon: What plans do you have for the future?
Mike: Well, in essence, we’d just like to have more and more work: as MTV once said: “Too much is never enough”. Right now, we’re looking seriously at expanding the team: we currently we have four designers covering all disciplines, including freehand and digital illustration, logo and branding, leaflet / brochure / report / magazine production, ads and websites, and we’ve recently developed our digital side to incorporate eLearning. With the steady increase of enquiries that we’re now experiencing, we expect to be adding to the team by December this year. Who knows, next year, THE WORLD Muh huh huh!
Jon: If any indie authors out there want a book cover designing, what information do you need from them and what are the costs involved?
Mike: Here’s a short list of what we require from an author when designing their book cover:
1) The artwork size required. For example, Amazon Kindle is 1000px x 1600px at 300dpi, but if the cover is to be commercially printed, we’d need to know the exact dimensions in mm for the cover, including the spine and end flaps. When prodded hard enough, the publisher or printer will supply these print specifications (often referred to simply as ‘specs’).
2) All the text (copy) that you want to appear on the cover, so things like the title, authors preferred name, end flap descriptions etc. I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people forget things like this!
3) An idea of the overall theme / tone of the book and what style you want it designed in (i.e. photographic, illustrative, just text etc). If you’ve got an idea or brief you can send us, then that's even better!
Before considering the design, it pays to read up on contemporary thinking to make sure you get everything covered… such as:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
Our pricing policy for book covers starts at £180. The author must provide implicit instructions or brief for us to follow (we will consult with the author before any work is undertaken to identify any issues or offer any alternative solutions). This includes one full set of design proofs followed by one full set of amends / alterations (further amends after that are charged at our hourly rate of £45/hr).
However, it’s important to remember that as a bespoke design service that encompasses a wide variety of disciplines and techniques, anything beyond ‘simple’ is reflected in the price. For example, a recently designed cover entitled ‘Going Solo’ cost £360, but that included 2 alternative options to choose from and had four sets of amends. Each cover is completely different so it’s impossible to have a price list. It really depends on what you want to achieve and what budget you have.
A 50% non-refundable deposit is payable by the client at the outset of any contract. This sum will be deducted from the final invoice and can be paid by cash, BACS or PayPal.
Jon: Where can people contact you?
Mike: As the brick-wrapped-letter-through-my-window approach is kinda frowned upon in these parts, and as it’s hard to find a reliable carrier pigeon, email is probably your best bet:
mike@thumbnail-design.co.uk
You can check out some assorted samples of our work at:
https://pinterest.com/thumbnaildesign...
Please keep checking for updates as we’ll be adding more samples once the drugs wear off…
Jon: A big thank you very much to Mike for spending the time to talk to the Captain's Blog...
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