Head Designer; Ryan Purdie-Smith.
Going through the process of introspectively assessing my own design style and then verbalising this, is probably a good approach for further inspiration, however not an easy task. I’ll speak to what I love and therefore, where subconsciously a lot of my design style would come from.
I’ve seemed to always find love for design in bizarre places, such as old packaging artwork. There’s an element of attraction to these as I feel they don’t gain the appreciation they should. Take old Safety Match boxes; the obsolete nature of these products usually renders them somewhat unappreciated, but when you look deep into this world and the artwork was the single thing standing between them and a sale, some of the design was amazing. This was the basis behind our rendition on vintage Safety Match boxes and Cigarette Boxes with CHD artist Nick Potts.This lens through which I view design, directed my sights to traditional tattoo design, which is peppered throughout our collection. Traditional tattoo design and vintage packaging/logo design, I feel are bread from the same cloth and I wanted to somehow hitch a ride on this style.
To tie this back to CHD, my appreciation for traditionalism, especially within old signets, matched with my love for rock/metal music, the punk subculture and traditional tattoo design, birthed our collection. I can appreciate that some bolder designs ideas may not have that accessibility of an everyday piece, so a stripping back the potency of some designs and letting the fundamentals of the ring do the heavy lifting.
As most ‘art’ will, I see our designs continuing to evolve further still, yet hopefully still answering some fundamental principles they I keep to be universal and timeless.