This week Eyestorm re-introduces the work of Jason Kedgley, whose designs are engrained in our popular culture thanks to his work with major global brands - and whom is also notably respected as an artist in his own right.

Whilst now recognised as a multi-disciplinary artist and designer, at the centre of Kedgley’s practice is a founding in the medium of Printmaking, which began with a graphics degree from London College of Printing in 1992 and an MA from Central St. Martins School of Arts. In these early years he developed himself as a skilled graphic print designer with particular interests in geometry and typography. It was also during his Masters studies that he met John Warwicker, a founding member of artist collective and agency, Tomato.

Tomato is an award-winning creative agency founded in 1991 by Steve Baker, Dirk Van Dooren, Karl Hyde, Richard Smith, Simon Taylor, John Warwicker and Graham Wood. Amongst its members are artists, musicians, designers and writers, who create innovative designs, build websites, create films and music, and even stage art installations, all as part of the agency’s impressive portfolio. While Tomato is essentially a design agency, it is probably more appropriate to consider them as a collective of artists. This is because the group do not allow themselves to be restricted by commercial design ‘norms’ - instead always looking for new innovative ways to design, using the more traditional creative mediums (music, poetry, and art), alongside more ground-breaking interactive platforms, multi-media, and experiential design.

Having officially joined the agency in 1996, Jason Kedgley is perhaps most well known for his Tomato work designing the album covers for Underworld’s Beaucoup Fish and Cowgirl records - exploring his interests in printmaking by experimenting with a unique technique of producing ‘photograms’. ‘Photograms’ are photographic images that are made without a camera, by placing objects directly onto the surface of light-sensitive material, and then exposing it to light. The resulting image, as seen on the Beaucoup Fish cover released in 1999, is a ‘negative’ shadow of the object used, featuring distinctive undulating variations in tone and colour.

Kedgley continued exploring this technique the following year when creating the cover of Underworld’s single, Cowgirl. For this design, Kedgley used modelled jelly cubes placed on light-sensitive photographic paper to create his photograms. As the variations in tones of a photogram depend on the transparency of the objects used, the consistency of jelly cubes was a perfect organic object to experiment with. Each of the resulting prints presented on Cowgirl, have subtle distinctions in the way the splotches, shapes, and tones are formed within each image.

In 2007, Eyestorm released two exclusive Kedgley print editions to include in their ‘Cover Up’ exhibition that year - a curated exhibition that showcased album cover art by artists such as Peter Blake, Stanley Donwood, and Paul Smith. In his print edition titled Cube and Tetra, Kedgley explores another unique technique in printmaking, combining digital printing with a white screen-print layer on reflective foil paper. These otherwise flat geometric shapes are brought to life through the subtle tone variances and different textures on the surface of the print, which seem to pull different parts of the image back and forth in the viewer’s eye. The stark white shape initially draws the eye, while the graduating tones then undulate back and forth creating a sense of movement as the eye focuses on different parts of the image.

These unique editions represent Kedgley’s pioneering work within the printmaking technique, a medium that formed the foundation for much of his now prolific creative practice. Notably, ‘Cube’ and ‘Tetra’ are a unique opportunity for collectors to own a piece of personal artwork from Kedgley, created for his own purpose, and detached from any specific branding or design ‘brief’ - a rare illustration of Kedgley’s pure artistic ambitions, as a Fine Artist in his own right.

You can find the two innovative print editions, Cube and Tetra, on Jason Kedgley’s artist page here.