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Vector on Tap
Designer Joshua Smith, a.k.a. Hydro74, brews up a frothy blend of vector art and blue gorillas with a pinch of devil-may-care humour.---------------
By Shannon Zhao
May 15, 2007 | There’s no artist-since-childhood story to be heard from Joshua Smith. He describes his early years as “drunkenness, abuse, and a lot of stress,” being shunted from relative to relative and ending up living with friends and working fulltime just to get through school. But having lived through it all, says Hydro74, “I only care about now and what I can do for my family and how we can grow.”
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During
our interview, Joshua Smith went to and from his snug Florida home studio
-- filled with Soviet pins, vinyl toys, stickers, and books -- and his Indiana
vacation destination with his family. The versatile artist isn’t a pool
of standing water. Smith’s work encompasses magazine layouts, CD cover
designs, snowboards, and typefaces, to name a few. Although currently based
in Orlando, Smith has worked in many parts of the U.S., and his work’s
been published overseas in Computer Arts.
He chose the name “Hydro74,” suggesting artistic
fluidity and freshness. Stylistically, you’ll find whatever you crave:
there’s heraldry-inspired clothing designs and eye-catching, fluorescent
ads. So drop the muddy brushes; flowing precision of form and line coalesce
into vector waves.
Why are you drawn to vector art?
Vector art, to me, is a somewhat new art form that’s starting to gain more respect in both commercial and fine art fields. It's digital, and with new mediums for printing, you can make prints look amazing. One might look at vector art as cheesy and simple, but it’s really complex. Most of the illustrations that I build get pretty complex. Each point is clicked and constructed. There is no easy solution to the illustration or magic tool that converts things for you. Well, there is, kinda, for the clip art stuff, but that’s a crazy technique in itself.
All the cleaner illustrations I do, for example, are very time-consuming.
It can take days for a good illustration to come into being. I think the biggest
difference is that with vector, it's easier to erase or change things than
it is for fine art. It's just that I use a mouse instead of a paintbrush.
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What's
the design process like?
It’s different for each client. Some may have this ritual that they may do before a project. But I mostly just discuss things with the client; find out where they want to take it, what age groups they are looking at, etc.
There are some clients who want a very specific thing, and I will do that. However, I always approach a project with the idea: What is something new that I can do for them? Is there something that is working really well right now in the market that I need to explore and give the client those options? So I would say it's a 60-40 split on when I can do my own thing. But even within that, they have certain needs and I need to make sure they are taken care of.
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