The adventure of Cut & Paste is finally over. I'll try and piece together all the moments in the build up to the event and where I ended up in the design industry. This story screams 'design nerd' so feel free to just look at the pretty pictures.
There is a strange stigma around Cut & Paste battles, elitist designers are quick to discredit the competition for its fast paced fifteen minute time limit. However, if you can't get an idea across to the audience in fifteen minutes - you won't be able to get one across if you had all the time in the world. From a designers point of view it's great practice in conceptual thinking and gaining industry exposure (it got me a new job!), so to truly experience Cut & Paste, buy a ticket and witness the event live, or balls up and enter one year.
The Metro Theatre hosted the 2009 Cut & Paste competition in Sydney Australia. Categories included 3d, Motion and 2d, which was my category. There were two rounds with two heats in the first round, each round had a theme and concept as a brief. Judges for 2d were Gregory Anderson from Trigger Design, Louise Davis from Mathematics and Michael & Eva from TOKO (these two are my design heroes, I saw their presentation at Semi Permanent 2007 and have followed their successful studio ever since).
I'd seen one of the first Cut & Paste competitions on the internet in 2005 and thought it was an interesting concept - several designers battling it out on stage to come up with the most creative answer to an object and theme all within fifteen minutes. I was still in university when the first Cut & Paste came to Australia in 2007 and decided to enter.
I received an email a couple of weeks before the event saying I could come try out. At this stage in university I'd become obsessed with learning any new technical design/film/sound program so everything I created always lacked a cohesive idea or concept. At university you're busy learning about design theory and every second word seems to be 'discourse' so sometimes you have to escape and create. In the try outs I took my Wacom tablet and plugged it in. I was opposite a girl who was using pencils and a camera, very hands on - I was doomed! The inventor of the Cut & Paste tournament encourages stage presence by using various techniques/tools and even insists on using an exciting crowd pleasing reveal in your design process.
In comparison, if I had a fifteen minute time-lapse of myself in the try outs it would have looked like the scene from Paranormal Activity where the girl just stands facing the camera - very scary. Needless to say I didn't get a call back and I spent the next two years at university absorbing what design could accomplish and how to push myself to create ideas that have a lasting value. After try outs I bought a ticket and went with some uni friends to the event regardless of my loss. There did seem to be an energy on the stage I'd seen previously on the internet recorded battles and everyone was truly talented at creating something in fifteen minutes. I promised myself if the circus rolled back into town I'd re-enter.
It had been two years but it was back. The event organisers had skipped a year to figure out how to make the event bigger and add on the global championships. This year they would fly every finalist around the world to compete in NYC.
I was now working in the magazine industry straight out of university which was teaching me all about pre-press and layout skills while leaving me with free time at night and weekends to experiment with film and animation. I was getting quicker at making even the most simple idea engaging. Meeting my four week magazine deadline meant relying on shortcuts and thinking of solutions on the spot. I entered Cut & Paste again with more confidence in my ideas, I was becoming more conceptual & creative with very little resources.
Just like the previous time I received an email asking to come to practice for the event night, however this time there were no try outs, it was a one way ticket to the Friday night battle. All the designers and illustrators at the practice round were friendly and we talked about how fun it was to be in this crazy battle. I think most of us were really nervous as up until now we had only ever designed behind closed doors under fluorescent light bulbs.
If there is ever any advice to give young graphic designers besides experimenting and drawing a lot - buy a tablet. In my first year of uni I bought a tablet after reading an article in a Computer Arts mag.
I was deep into learning the secrets of all the digital designers and the article described techniques to blur the lines between analogue and digital. Everyday I used the Wacom. Within three weeks I stopped using the mouse completely and achieved that zen like state where you hold the Wacom pen in your hand while you're typing and forget you're even holding it at all. Over summer all I did was Wacom and used it to submit designs to Threadless.
I clocked up so many hours during uni that the surface of the tablet partially wore away (above). It's not a tool to replace traditional pencil or paint, it's more a tool to speed up your regular processes. Speeding up then takes you to other places that were restrictive when using a mouse. Being less restricted means you start to think differently and add new unconventional processes into the mix, it's a strange feeling to describe but very natural.
The Sydney Cut & Paste event was coming up and even my editor and her boyfriend had bought a ticket to cheer me on. The organisers were going to release the theme for the two rounds a couple of days before the event so we had time to prepare a creative response and make our process look better live. I messaged my friends and even told my relatives in Europe they could watch it via the live video stream.
The first round was to design a tattoo with the theme of 'Sweet As', if you made it to the second round you were to design a Metro Poster with the theme of 'Desire'. For the first round I thought there was a good idea in embarrassing tattoos. I drew a punk jacket with comically scary badges and put a pink unicorn tattoo poking out from the chest. It had a sense of humour and I'd worked in the idea that I could take a picture on stage of my measly chest hair with a hand pulling down the zipper to contribute movement in the design. The second round brief was a little trickier. At the time I lived two hours from Sydney, I was commuting four hours a day and if you pick up those free newspapers at any station there is usually a page dedicated to the moment when you see someone in the train you like but don't have the courage to talk to - this page let's you leave a message with the love starved guys and girls who commute to work every day.
I always found these messages funny and most of the time they were so specific, remembering intimate details of the person that would even make a stalker cringe. I came up with an idea to create a community awareness ad about these funny but creepy love adverts to meet up with people they saw in the train. I called it CREEP - Citizens Requesting Excitement from Enticing Passengers, with the tag line "Don't Be Creepy". My process was to draw an outline of a train carriage from side on with two people inside and write some funny copy about how a guy who obviously was drooling at the girl sitting in front of him. He would be taking into account her hair colour, what she smelt like and what kind of thread count her sweater was. To get some excitement on stage I decided I could use my camera to take a self portrait and either take a picture of one of the female contestants by stalking them during the fifteen minute round or take a picture of someone in the crowd.
After setting up and hearing the creator of Cut & Paste talk us through the night I started to relax and had a beer to calm the nerves. People were starting to fill up the room which felt more like a party.
This is a basic rundown of the night, it's a bit of a blur as it went so quickly. Walked on stage in the first heat of the first round. Timer started and I got to work on the jacket, zipper first, then badges, pink unicorn, then a photo of my chest hair, then a photo of my hand, arrange elements, final tweaks and that was time. Judges talking amongst themselves. Announce myself and another in the final round. Phew. Walk around all night waiting for the next round.
I'd been trying to remember the copy to write for this one but ended up just going with it on the night. Drew a quick outline of a train carriage, got my camera took a photo of myself, and then sneaked up on another designer in the finals who luckily was a girl and took her photo, took a photo of the judges, arranged elements, wrote the copy in and that was time up. In the end it was a combination of creativity and humour that got me the ticket to New York.
I didn't make it past the first round however it gave me a great feeling to be on that level and know what it's like to excel in a specific field.
I'm very grateful for the experience that Cut & Paste provided me, I got so much out of the trip that for the next year I was in overdrive mode. So many ideas came out of my ten days in New York that I'd consider travelling at least once a year to other countries for many years to come.
On returning from New York I went back to my job at the magazine, a couple months later I received an email from one of the judges (who saw my performance in Sydney) about work inquiries. A month later I changed jobs and started working for their company. A happy ending after all.
Lev Berry began his design career unknowingly with Kids Pix on Macintosh. He would later learn he was a graphic designer and that his whole life would revolve around being inquisitive and imaginative. Today Lev roams the freelance wild west, finding time to create at night and on weekends to fulfil his hunger for the unknown.
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