Jamie Clifton

0:16Everyone I'm Jamie and I'm terrified of public speaking so bear with me first I'll just take you through what Vice is in case someone doesn't know there's Vice UK which is our website which is kind of like the umbrella of we've got a bunch of sites broadly which is kind of women's issues motherboard Tech noisy which is music load of other stuff Vice video which is all our online documentaries Vice land which we've just launched our TV station.

0:42And then Vice magazine which is where it all began but I'm here to talk about Vice UK there's a staff of about I think there's eight of us four editors four staff writers we don't have an art director or a Photo Des or anything. So it's kind of everyone does a bit of everything when it comes to commissioning illustration and photography we got here photography majority of our stuff is like the magazine has kind of takes up all of the kind of more portfolio stuff or projects and series whereas we the majority of the stuff we commission for online is photography to accompany articles so that one on the left was Hannah or sty frighter dressed up in a bunch of weird clothes and went to Fashion Week to see how easy it was to get style snapped by fash photographers turns out very easy this one on the right is foto by Chris bethl who is here tonight somewhere who's kind of one of our de facto staff photographers he's not staff but we work with him a couple of times a week from a I think it was from a Mayday protest illustr again we commission a lot of original illustrations to go with articles this one on the left is Ken AEL who's amazing I don't know if you've ever seen his work but he does kind of really nice comic book style stuff so him Sam Taylor it's another one we work with a lot Dan Evans kind of a pool of illustrators who we kind of always come keep coming back to because they are essentially the vice aesthetic we've worked with them for so long that they are now you don't we kind of give them a bit of direction kind of give them a vague brief and then they come back to us with sketches but there is a very collaborative process because we kind of we trust them.

2:39So inherently now that it's very much a please can you do this and they come back. And it's great and then we run it which is a nice way to work.

2:48And then on the right is a comic we run a few Comics by kind of various artists a lot of illustrators will just kind kind of send us stuff out of the blue in fact Pete sharp who's also here tonight hey Pete send me some more comics man yeah they kind of send through stuff and we'll run it as and when it's just nice it's it's been a thing we've had in the magazine for a long time Johnny Ryan was our kind of Comic Book Guy but obviously we don't he doesn't work so much online so we just run these whenever we can main thing I want to talk about today is how we work with freelance artists and photographers on themed weeks when we kind of we pick a topic that's important to us or our readers and then dedicate a whole week or fortnite of videos and articles to it his first one was Britain at night which was tied to the news that it was half of all of the UK's nightclubs have closed over the past decade which was obviously important to us because we all like going out a lot and there are a fewer places to go out now and photography we thought we thought we'd go heavy on photography because nlife lends itself to photography quite well Club Photography and the like first one I'm going to show you is a sleep where you danced kind of self-explanatory it was a project where our other de facto star photographer Jake lwis went to the sites of kind of old shuttered clubs so this one was the end in hoben that all these clubs were once clubs and have now been turned into often flats or sometimes shops or offices just to see what's happened to all these iconic night spots and yeah this is the end hurn which is now well when he did the project at least it was mostly kind of Guardian scheme Flats not sure what's going on there.

4:52Now this one hasser see an iconic Club open 1982 demolished 2000 2 run by New Order and Factory records but yeah closed over a decade ago.

5:08And is now like many of them luxury Flats Swan baggley which is I think it's about to be the HQ of Jamie Oliver's sprawling sort of businesses but yeah when we went to visit it was just this kind of an empty shell of what it once was and I think photography was important here to can you know kind of a lot on the site we talk about how gentrification plays a big part in closing down businesses and clubs and bars that we all like and kind of frequent but it's hard to show that you know can can write about it very easily but you can get them message across a lot better I think with photos when you kind of see when you imagine a room full of people dancing and now.

6:04This is going to be a pratt or a Jamie HQ this was another one from that week which was dolon and the dangers of a thriving nightlife scene which was Chris bethl again we work with him a lot which was about how places like dolon kind of property developers will build these plats and sell area as a great place to live because it's full of fun bars and clubs and that kind of thing.

6:36But then in doing so and building these Flats they contribute to kind of rising rents which force out all of the bars and clubs that they were selling there on in the first place so Chris did some nice observational photography there going places there's no better place to be and then this one yeah.

7:01So illustration design this was Ace guide to mental health which is obviously mental health is a sensitive topic and a lot of the interviewees didn't necessarily want to have their photos online so we thought go heavy with illustration and design kind of a better way to communicate it. And we also worked with we wanted to keep a kind of running theme across the whole series just tie it all together.

7:28So we work with a designer called Nick Scott who does a lot of collages and photo manipulation.

7:35So these are a couple of the images from that couple more there.

7:43And then illustration this one's great Stan evand who again we work with a lot which is you know speak for itself very good and this article was about how St of is killing British men so essentially British men aren't talking enough about their problems which is leading to high suicide rates mortality rates so the whole point of this article was to kind of spur conversation among men so we needed it to reach those men so they started talking about their problems and we wanted something very striking and kind of bold to cut through people's Facebook timelines you if you're scrolling through your Facebook which is where we get a lot of readers coming from and you just see a headline it doesn't really mean anything to you people aren't going to click but I think this really really it was one of the most read articles of that series and did kind of spark a lot of conversation. And I think it's kind of mostly down it was a great article but it is very much down to the image as well that was was part of pulling people in and then that week as well was a nice example of how we kind of because we've got offices in various places around the world and our us office chipped in and contributed to this.

9:06So that was a nice example of how you know they commission I think that's Joel Benjamin on the left and the guy on the right Andy Baker on the right. And we've worked with Joel since so it's a nice example of our other offices commissioning work. And then we see that work.

9:26And then we can then go on and commission again so it's kind of you know seeing people that you wouldn't otherwise see and the pool of people that we work with in London is is ever growing and it helps from kind of people a lot we have a lot of people emailing in and pitching us ideas and we get a lot of we find a lot of people through that.

9:47But it's nice to kind of broaden the horizons a bit and meet people from elsewhere such as New York or LA or Barcelona where we have offices and we built a lot of great relationships through that. And I think that's it it is it there you go