Aaron is shaking up the world of vector design and mobile art.
Take note of his incredible ability to thrive upon limitations to create these gems :)
It would be great to learn more about your day to day life. What do you do for work? Where do you live? When did you get started in mobile?
I’m currently living in West London with my wife and two very young children.
I’ve been really lucky in the past 10 years to have worked for some amazing companies. I started in television at UK broadcasters ITV and Sky designing motion graphics. I then moved to Twitter working in Brand Strategy with top brands on the Twitter platform. It’s while at Twitter I really got an understanding of mobile design and engagement in social media.
In the last year I’ve been designing real time data driven visualizations and information graphics for Sky News primarily for the UK General Election and politics across television, mobile and pretty much any other digital display size you can think of.
As a bit of an election geek this has made me very happy. My art has been steadily moving in parallel with my creative design work mostly on a freelance basis.
What’s your creative process like? Do you have a concept first and go from there, or is it more fluid? Has Assembly changed your work flow?
Really good question and actually gets to the heart of why I love Assembly so much.
If you were to describe a normal industry standard design program you might say its creative applications are limitless. This is great but I have found personally, this amount of choice can be paralyzing and expensive.
My creative process on your platform actually lies in its constraints and accessibility.
Defining constraints early on is so import for an artist or designer because it’s these constraints that focus creative choices. That combined with an intuitive user experience and accessible cost helps an artist or designer find the shortest distance between there idea and seeing it realized.
My personal interests lie in the relationship between surprising characters and the text underneath. I love to create emotive narratives and a sense that those stories or worlds might extend outside the frame.
Is there a particular time a day that you’ve dedicated to making Assembly designs? How often are you designing with Assembly?
I started using Assembly between places like home to work on the train. Work can be filled with as many meetings as actual design work so it’s been a great creative outlet. Then it made its way to the sofa while watching tv. I’m currently experimenting with the best way to use it on professional jobs.
Where do you find your inspiration?
I’m a film geek, I know far far too much about movies. It’s given me a lot of references and inspiration. Also there are some amazing communities and work on Instagram and other social networks so I’m spoilt for choice.
Any tips to share about design and Assembly?
1st — Play play play.
2nd — Combine shapes to create new interesting shapes.
3rd — Use colors and drop shadows to guide and focus your audience to the area of the image you want them to look at.
4th Play play play
Any particular artist that you like to shout out or share?
There are so many designers and artists inspiring me everyday it’s far too difficult to shout just a few out. Recently the people I’ve been following on Instagram are all creating such incredible stuff I want to send a massive shoutout to that community for what they are creating.
Where can people keep in touch with you?
For more information about my work please contact me via Instagram @aaron_smillie or on Twitter @aaronsmillie.