Visiting Professional - Build

Michael C. Place is the co-founder of Build which has been established for 15 years, alongside his wife Nicky Place and a team of 2 other designers. He has been a Graphic Designer for 26 years; he did his Foundation course in Scarborough, then received his OND in York for Graphic Design. Later on, he studied for a HND Graphic Design degree at Newcastle but left since he thought it wasn't the type of Graphic Design he wanted to produce, he wanted to create record sleeve designs. Micheal is passionate about music and said that when he first saw the Iron Maiden poster, he thought it was really interesting and inspired him to want to do similar designs. He talked about other music he liked such as Saxon Wheels of Steel and Black Sabbath and people used to ask him to paint Saxon Wheels on their leather jackets/clothing which he did.

Before Michael knew about Graphic Design, during the early-mid 80s, he was interested in technical drawing and fascinated in architecture; he said if he wasn't a Graphic Designer now, he would be an architect. During high school, his art teacher introduced him to a Graphic Design book in which was the first time he had ever heard of Graphic Design. He said when he was younger, he loved the the Rotring Pens and Letrasets as he said they were quick and easy to rub type onto a design and were used for punk fan zines. He still collects Letraset catalogues and his favourite typeface was Calypso.

Michael as a Graphic Designer is passionate about typography and said that Neville Broody was one of his inspirations when he first started doing Graphic Design as he said they were tidy. During his HND, he had internships at ID magazine where he worked on the Chaos Culture magazines. He also had an extended placement at Design Republic and later got offered a job by Ian Anderson in 1992.

Michael met his wife Nicky when they both worked on a Sony video game, Wipeout. They travelled the world together to get away from Design but then Nicky went back to work for Sony and Michael established his own business, Build in London. Nicky later quit her job to work at Build where they do not specialise in a specific area of design but are open-minded. They have recently relocated back up North.

Michael said that we should work for someone else before setting up our own business straight away as there are things to learn.