{"id":11,"date":"2016-12-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/everpress.local.com\/?p=11"},"modified":"2018-05-29T20:30:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T19:30:13","slug":"get-to-know-kemar-reid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/get-to-know-kemar-reid\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to Know: Kemar Reid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Kemar, could you tell us about what first got you into design?<\/h3>\n

The album cover Boy In Da Corner (Dizzee Rascal, 2003) was the first time that I looked at album covers and started asking \u201chow was this done?\u201d. It made me wonder what the entire process behind it was – everything from the styling to the final result. Even now, I love seeing the full thought process and execution behind something.<\/p>\n

\"Kemar
Kemar Reid, Ditto Press Flyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What made you choose to pursue graphic design as a career?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m an artistic person and I can\u2019t go a day without thinking of a new idea. I like creating things by using textures and shapes to form something totally different. I also just love finding out how and why something has been designed, whether it\u2019s for a specific purpose or if it\u2019s just simply \u201cbecause it looks nice\u201d. Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with something just looking nice though!<\/p>\n

Are there any aspects of your life that are led by design?<\/h3>\n

I think the strongest thing would be the way I dress. Going shopping has given me such an appreciation for design. If you think about it, we only actually need a tshirt, a pair of jeans and some shoes, but great design makes you want to own more and more, it has the power to change everything.<\/p>\n

\"Kemar
Kemar Reid, T-shirt Design<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Who are the main influences on your work?<\/h3>\n

–\u00a0Ben Drury<\/a>,\u00a0He\u2019s worked close with Dizzee Rascal over the past few years and his website is such a great archive of work. My favourite thing of his is the Autobiography of graffiti artist Futura<\/a> that he designed.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0Peter Saville<\/a>, I love the Umbro kit that he designed for England Football team!\u00a0He actually started off designing album covers and widened his repertoire from there. That\u2019s what is so great about design, it\u2019s an endless platform – you can start doing something small then end up working on a huge billboard.<\/p>\n

What attributes do you think constitutes quality design?<\/h3>\n

For me, a\u00a0real driver for good design is a strong idea and a strong sense of taste. I personally think that a strong idea is often something simple. For example, the Nike logo – it\u2019s simple but incredibly recognisable and effective.<\/p>\n

\"Kemar
Kemar Reid,\u00a0NTS Live Flyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What are some of your favourite pieces of merch you\u2019ve seen over the years?<\/h3>\n

Eminem had an official urinal mat with his face on! Otherwise, the band Grateful Dead have some amazing merch, they completely created their own world and their own aesthetic based around little bear characters.<\/p>\n

\"Grateful
Grateful Dead Merchandise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What would you class as your biggest career moment to date?<\/h3>\n

The “Cube” design that I did in collaboration with Carhartt. They’ve always championed NTS and always have us involved with in-store external events. The collaboration started with it just being NTS designs printed on Carhartt tee’s but they liked them so much that it grew into a huge collaboration that was stocked internationally and required promotional video concepts and graphics.<\/p>\n

\"Kemar
Kemar Reid, Cube T-shirt for Carhartt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What have been your best design moments at NTS?<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s honestly a great moment every day just having your work put out there to be shared to the masses. Specifically though, I did some work promoting a comedy show that Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) was working on. We sat together in his hotel room and created the artwork for the flyers. We used his handwriting on the flyers within the artwork which gave it a really nice personal touch.<\/p>\n

You can check out Kemar\u2019s catalogue of work here<\/a><\/u>.<\/h3>\n
\"Kemar
Kemar Reid, NTS T-shirt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We sat down to chat with NTS Radio’s graphic designer Kemar Reid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/2247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}