Me & Eu

0:04[Applause]

0:13Hello. , hello. I'm Sam. I'm half of me and EU. , this is my other half, Nathan. , he couldn't make it today. He's in Cuba. Was gutted he couldn't attend and so here he is accompanying me in corrugated cardboard form which is basically just as good.

0:36This is me and Nathan. I have cut off all my hair since then. So me and Nathan both graduated from uni in 2014. I graduated from Kingston. He graduated from Falmouth. We're both now designers in London and we work at studio called GBH. , fun fact, we were actually hired on exactly the same day. We both have the same surname, Smith. Obviously, very common, but we're commonly mistaken for brothers, but we are not. Make that very clear. And today, I'm going to be talking about a project we personally initiated last summer called Me and EU, and it is in direct response to Brexit. So, as we all probably know, on the 23rd of June, the UK voted to leave the EU. , neither me or Nathan were actually in the country at the time. We'd sent our postal works off. I was in Corfu. Nathan was in Croatia with his German girlfriend. So, I think we can all agree we were feeling pretty European at that point. , and then we both woke up to the news. , that we were exiting the EU. It was, yeah, pretty shocking moment. It took me, yeah, a few hours to process the information. , especially as I had severe sunstroke at this point. So, I started writing a message to Nathan. , and halfway through writing it, I actually got one back from him. We chated over a bit, said the we swore a few times, said the word cried a lot, and decided we needed to talk as soon as we got back in the country. , on getting back, we realized the full scare of the situation. Everyone we knew, especially the creative industry, , seemed to feel the same way we did. , all of our social media was very remain focused. I honestly couldn't say that I spoke to anyone who voted to leave. I don't know if you guys feel the same. , and I think more than anything, it kind of made us feel really disconnected. It not just from the EU, but from half of our own country, let alone the government.

2:37And so, we knew we wanted to do something out about it. We wanted to decrease this void. It felt to us that it was a case of whoever shouted loudest was heard and this overarching feeling of this inward-looking perception of the UK was being fueled and I think me, Nathan and a lot of our friends felt that we weren't being heard and we felt misunderstood and even a little bit embarrassed and so we figured we wanted to do something about it, something outwardlooking and something that reached out. , yeah, Brexit brought a lot of negativity, a lot of hatred to the table, and we wanted to do a project that focused on positivity, unity, and good humor. , I mean, the main point is that outside of all these political debates and definitions, we all want to remain in touch and keep talking, right? So, how do we connect and get people's voices heard? , we thought about numerous ways of doing it. We thought we could do flags. We thought we could do pin badges. We thought we could do a series of protest posters, but I think that was pretty well covered by everyone. , but none of these methods had the personal one-to-one connection for the voices that couldn't be heard and but postcards do. , they talk of crossing borders, they talk of travel, they talk of conversation in a really personal way. So, we started approaching people. We approached our friends, creators, people we admire. , and I think the the format of a postcard allows people to communicate by designing something enticing, beautiful, thoughtprovoking on the front, but also write something quite heartfelt and emotional on the back. And we're excited by how each of these postcards were quite quiet, but what one person speaking to another person, but collectively they create a much larger picture. And I think it's quite I think we me and Nathan both spoke and we agreed that it's quite rare for creatives to use this. We communicate messages as best we can for corporations. And I think it's rare that we use this use this power to just say p to to say that what we personally feel about something to someone else. Collectively the creative community has a powerful voice and we kind of wanted to use it. , so in the end we managed to get 115 entries which kind of absolutely blew us away. They ranged from studios like MB, Kessle Kramer, Johnson Banks to names like Craig Olden, Jim Sland, Phil Carter to just students as well who just submitted and we felt this was perfect. It was exactly this kind of collective everyone getting stung stuck in anyone and everyone and it was that was the feeling that we wanted. So, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to kind of show you guys, show you them all, stop on a few where you can't really explain the meaning behind them or the idea behind them in a tweet or or an Instagram post. So, I'm going to go through the entries quite quickly, stopping on the old one here and there to give a bit of background. So, the brief was quite simple. It was design a postcard that kind of sums up how you felt about Brexit. And also just write a personal message for the back. It was it was simple enough. And first I'm going to stop on is Taberson Patel's. It is literally an album cover but it is perfect. It is one of the ones where we got it through quite last minute and I think it was just like I wish I'd come up with that.

6:20And then I think we can all associate with the joy of receiving post or receiving a postcard. I mean not obviously receiving a bill or receiving a letter from the bank but there is that oh this is personal. This is addressed to me.

6:34This is this is just for me and I think that that was the feeling that we kind of wanted to encompass. So next one is Simon Griffin. He is a copyrighter based up in Leeds and he basically bought the Daily Mail on the the day of the announcement. , and he basically cut out loads of letters and he rearranged them into like a poem.

7:01, and it it's just really it had this kind of like poison pen letter vibe which was quite nice. , and just give you a little bit of time to read that. We just felt that it was such a there was such a dedication for some for someone who's not even like a designer. And it doesn't it's not you wouldn't even say it's necessarily the most well-designed thing, but it's great. And yeah, so I keep going through the range of work it was.

7:27We had stuff that was completely digital.

7:30We had some that was completely hand painted like this one. So delicate and just ones that were just nice little pickouts from people's everyday life. Just obviously some that are orientated more towards designers, but yeah. And Patrick Thomas is a British British designer living in Berlin. , and it is literally a love heart formed from one of his thumb prints and a thumb print of one of his German students because he teaches out in Berlin. And obviously it's a really simple idea. It was completely different to everyone else's. , yeah, I think it's just pretty beautiful. So, , I thought it was quite interesting to see how people interpreted it. , some people used like football, some people used food. , there's Nigel. , so this guy sits on my floor at work, so it was pretty funny. You're receiving that in the in an email. , and yeah, there was just a a good like an amazing range of just little ideas that you just Yeah, it was amazing.

8:44, and then we had ones that kind of played with the format a little bit more. The ones that worked on the back. Yeah. Ah, it's very nice. Um and then this one's from Jim Sland. It just plays with the format of a postcard really well. I had an idea of actually using all the stamps from the EU countries and then we got this through the post and I just thought, "Wow, he's done it way better than I could have done it." , and so obviously we kind of asked our friends, , we asked our friends first, but when you start getting emails through from people just wanting to be involved, , it's obviously you're going in the right you're going in the right direction and Merkel on a Merkel on a postcard. Yeah. , this one, yes, you can kind of tell. It was it came and we thought initially it was like a blank postcard but it's actually scored so you can fold it into an airplane and on the back it says you can never stop us flying and this is from Harry Grandy and yeah I think it was interesting to see how people interpreted it like some people tried to be funny some people tried to be like a lot more serious and yeah I think that was for us we just thought there are so different ways of how people have interpreted it that it was pretty beautiful. , again, we're going to focus on one another one that's that works in the front and back. You look at this on the front and you think, "Oh, that's quite nice. It's like a little bit cute." , and then like completely ruined our template. , and he kind of sent this like quite long email.

10:24This is by Mike Fisher. And he he kind of sent us like a an email that was just like I feel so broken and disrupted by it and this is why I've done this. Actually halfway through the project we had to change the address of where it was being sent to cuz Nathan moved house and so it was a massive pain in the ass to change that for his.

10:43But yeah we tried to say yes to kind of every entry that we got but there was a bit of back and forth sometimes where this is a guy that actually sits opposite me at work. We tried to there was a bit of back and forth and people seemed so enthusiastic to try and create the best possible outcome.

11:02So yeah it was really it was a really amazing process.

11:08This is Studio Thompson's. They basically it's a rainbow but created with every single color from all the flags in the EU. Again, it's not something that is necessarily most obvious, but it was their interpretation. Again, it's just pretty beautiful.

11:22This is Nathan's. He physically did this. It is It took him It didn't It took him quite a while. There's loads of layers to it.

11:31But it's kind of falling apart now. We sent it in the mail. There were like loads in the envelope that fell off.

11:36But it was funny. MBs and just yeah I think there's it got quite hectic near the end because obviously Theresa May Darth Theresa or Darth Ma she hadn't triggered the date and we weren't entirely sure when it was going to happen. So when obviously it was announced when it was going to be triggered we're like oh frantic frantic frantic getting everything printed. , so yeah. And there were ones that just made us laugh.

12:13, like this one. , this is Steven Graham, the illustrator. Yes, that is Article 50 pissing itself. , and this is the last entry. We actually got this. We sent it to print like a couple of days before.

12:28We had a really quick turnaround and this was sent half an hour before the deadline.

12:36This is and it's John Paul Dowling who's education director at ISTD. So it was great to have him in and I think that the overriding fact was it he really felt like people wanted to contribute towards this this bigger thing and I think that was this is my entry. There's a lot of small writing on here. I'm not going to make you read it so go on the website to read this. It obviously just it felt like people wanted to contribute towards this bigger cause and it made us very happy really. And this was yeah this kind of epitomiz epitomized the project. It was it didn't look like this at all when we first sent it and we were like are you trying to do karaoke?

13:16And he was like yeah. , and we kind of get like sent a bit of it was like a it was like a really good back and forth and we kind of it got better and better and it got to the point where the designer Charlie New House just was so we were so happy with how it turned out that yeah, this is one of our favorites. So, just going to quickly go through the last little bits. , yeah, like these are from these are from students and fresh graduates. , yeah, it was it was pretty. Oh, this one, , it's like a you know when you can make like a paintbrush on on Photoshop, it's made from Farage's head just screaming. , and so yeah, , I think we just want to This is all of them. These are all the ones we sent out.

14:06I think we just want to say thanks to everyone who submitted from the UK. It seriously means a lot. We never thought there would be so many. , and so we sent we sent them all out. We sent them to the 27 remaining EU countries on the trigger date.

14:16We had everything lined up. , this is spinning. Yes. , and then we kind of waited. We wanted we waited for the EU to rece for the EU to receive the cards. We knew there was less of an extent of an incentive for someone from the EU to send one back, but because I guess I guess we were the ones that up really.

14:36But we really hope we'd get some conversations going and we have started getting replies. , obviously it's not the same contrast as all of them, but they've only just started getting received and we've already received like eight. These are the ones that I had sent the presentation earlier, but these are got like eight responses and they're way better than we expected and they've all kind of responded directly to the one that they got sent. So, we are the annoying gum on the shoe of the EU and this is how it got responded.

15:04This is Friedrich Handle in response in responding to Matt Perchard's Max Goofer talking about how we are the person left out to sunburn in the EU and and we felt that it it kind of and and they're ginger so double I think it it compliments like the laid-back vibe of BIFFs studio dumbar looked at how complicated the EU actually is which we felt was completely completely different to the very simple design they got from Carmen Dowling and Ellen Spencson references Sam Rose taking the idea of cutting yourselves off but wanting to be stuck back together and studio MS again shows their opinion on how disjointed the EU really is as a reply to Luke Haye's simple statement I think we can that all of us can associate ourselves with we are Europeans so this is the point right now we've been lucky enough to get really good response online, which is incredible. But having seen the cards printed physically, there's something about them that a screen can't do justice to. So, we really want to find we really wanted to find a way to celebrate these physically. So, we've been asked to potentially exhibit them at Design Manchester as well as in Lisbon and Trin at the and at the Torino graphic graphic days festival. We've been asked to give a an hour talk in Turin.

16:34Which is pretty crazy. And fingers crossed a book will be produced. We're currently in talks with a publisher. We want we kind of want to reference those like old school postcard books where you it's all perforated and you tear tear them out and everyone kind of use them and it's like it's just up to you. Thank you. [Applause]