10:33am Thursday 27th August 2009
By Ron Godfrey
MATTHEW Lazenby and Gary Brown really are Creative Fellows – and students in York are benefiting from it.
The two men, who for five years have run the Lazenby Brown graphic design consultancy in York’s Shambles, were bestowed the title of Creative Fellows by Steve Purcell, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at York St John University three years ago.
It all stemmed from the duo’s successful principle of applying great creative ideas to a huge range of clients, including Heineken, Shepherd Engineering Services, Harrowells solicitors, Business Link and the University of York.
Building on Mat’s previous work in schools and universities as a motivational speaker, they developed talks around the themes of creative thinking, self confidence and enterprise skills, and decided to devote a percentage of their working week to developing links with education.
Now they are pitching for the Best Link with Higher Education title in The Press Business Awards 2009.
Their year-long fellowship resulted in their introducing a project for Level Two fine arts students in the Autumn of 2007 in which graphic designers worked with fine artists and media students, a collaboration which became the students’ module brief for the term.
There were a series of working sessions with actual and virtual visits to key sites in York and around the world to study the message of images.
It culminated in an exhibition by the students based on static digital works, performance or dance-based motion graphics, film and three dimensional works.
Since then, Lazenby Brown has regularly been invited back to York St John University to collaborate with students and staff. As well as talks on professional creative practice, they have designed and developed two issues of Neutral, the university’s media magazine; and they have recently branded a whole season of events for the faculty of arts under the banner Create.
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