Gyula (pronounced DOO-lah) Nemeth, the lucky Hungarian designer who uploaded the 100,000 logo onto the LogoLounge.com site in November, says that logo design in his country is currently in transition.
In socialist days, there were no big international firms to be had as clients, and what design work there was was done by state-owned companies or freelancers. There was definitely design talent in place, but the juicier clients were missing.
Today, things have definitely changed. Nemeth, an art director for a mid-sized advertising firm in Budapest, reports that while the menu of available clients has expanded greatly, but so has the roster of available designers. Some are qualified, while others definitely are not.
"Then, there were no computers or elaborate printing techniques, so the whole design process required pure talent both in conceptualizing and designing. There were around 30 to 40 people in the country who had good names in the design field and who could handle large amounts of quality work," he says, adding that most of these people are still active. "But times have changed, and there are hundreds of firms of every size, so competition is very tough. Since price became the most important factor, the quality fell pretty low."
Like almost everywhere today, design has become a very popular profession in Hungary. Also like in many other parts of the world, many clients want cheap, fast solutions. "So some of the real 'old school' craftsman face financial problems while incompetent newcomers take advantage of the situation," Nemeth says.
The art director feels that there isn't really something that can be defined as "Hungarian design" today-it's not all that different from that found in other countries. But that's a good thing: Graphic design, he believes, is a good example of how peoples in different cultures should work together all of the time. Each new interaction is a new opportunity that designers should cherish.
"We all browse through styles and trends from all around the world every day, pick up little things we like, and implement them in our work. Or we get in touch with a total stranger from the end of the world, after seeing his or her work, just to have fun and work together on a project," he says.
Nemeth creates plenty of illustration, as well as corporate identity and branding, through his agency and freelance work: Most recently, he has been developing mascots for several clients and has plans to write a comic book. He is very interested in sports identities and would like to specialize someday in political/cultural editorial illustration.
The designer's logo design work is highly illustrative with plenty of energy. He uses his sketchbook everyday, and every logo decision he makes is closely based on his sketches.
"Every time I sit down to work directly on the computer, I come to realize that it's just a wasted of time. Paper is something that I can't and shouldn't avoid in my work,” he says. “I try to share my time between traditional illustration, vector illustration and logo design. I really don't want to let down any of these three. When I'm busy at the office doing identity stuff, after work, I definitely want to spend some time with pencil and paper."
At 30-years-old, Nemeth has been working as a designer since 1999 He is hopeful about design in his country and cites a new organization, MATT (Society of Hungarian Graphic Designers and Typographers), as a champion for design there (www.matt.org.hu). The group sponsors competitions, organizes competitions, and, when necessary, makes noise about noteworthy design issues.
"One of our main goals [for MATT] is defending our work. Very often, companies take advantage of freelancers by not paying them or paying less than what was in the contract papers-if there was any contract. Of course, nobody wants to go to court, because it would take a long time to reach any final result," the artist says. "The only way to defend creative work is to have a solid union like MATT in the background to help us if something goes wrong. Until now, nothing like this existed in Hungary."
Thank you to Gyula and all of the LogoLounge members who uploaded work and took part in the 100,000th logo competition. A complete list of winners can be found at HYPERLINK "http://www.logolounge.com/LL_contest2.asp" http://www.logolounge.com/LL_contest2.asp. To view more of Gyula’s work, go to www.seadevilworks.blogspot.com.)
