Veerle's blog

It's always a pleasure when an Illustrator is from one of my favorite US cities namely San Francisco. It's truely an honor that I can introduce an interview with the super talented Scott Hansen aka ISO50.

Hi There! My name is Scott Hansen, I'm 30 years old and live in San Francisco. I split my time creating visual work as ISO50 and making music as Tycho.

If I would have to make a top 5 of my favorites artists Scott Hansen would be in it since I totally dig his style. The typography and the color palettes work so well together everytime which isn't easy, but Scott is a master at it. The graphic techniques makes things look old and very contemporary at the same time. Much of Scott's work uses organic components and when that is combined with textures it becomes simply brilliant. I totally loose any knowledge of time when browsing through his work. I am in awe!

What was your best concept for an illustration so far and how did you come up with the idea?

It's hard to say what I think my "best" would be, but I do have some personal favorites. One that instantly comes to mind is the cover for my last album, "Past is Prologue". This album was a re-release of my previous album and so I took the original artwork I had done a couple years earlier and evolved it. This was a rare chance to spend a lot more time refining the image. Usually there are some pretty strict timelines and you don't have the luxury of fully familiarizing yourself with the piece and then revisiting it, so this was a great chance to sort of fix the mistakes of the past. The initial concept was to simply visualize the music, create an image which reflected the essence of what I was trying to convey musically. I knew I wanted everything to feel very organic and I wanted it to create something that didn't look "designed", it needed to look more like an illustration or a painting. In my music, I am always trying to create layers of perception that peel away to reveal new things as you listen closer and become more familiar with the songs. I applied this concept by using the negative space to imply that you were viewing some organic form that had been cut open to reveal its contents. The resulting form was supposed to vaguely recall the inside of a heart, with the chambers and such. As for the imagery itself I wanted to use a lot of photography but effect it heavily and arrange it in a montage as metaphor for the way voices and sounds sort of drift in and out of the songs. I used a lot of paint and ink and color overlay effects to give a psychedelic overtone to the piece and lend some kinetic energy, reflecting the surreal nature and motion of the music.

Many examples of your work are collages, can you reveal a bit on how those come to life? Do you start out on paper? I mean the workflow from coming up with the idea, colors till the finished artwork?

I'll usually sketch up a rough outline to get the main ideas and elements defined, but the finished product rarely turns out looking much like those sketches. The colors are all done in Photoshop; I'll have a sense of the mood I want to convey, but I do a lot of experimenting with the colors until I hit on what I'm looking for. Overall, experimentation is a very big part of my process. I don't just sit down and whip out an image, it evolves over time, sometimes in a single sitting, sometimes over days or weeks even. It's the process of constantly trying different approaches and refining things further that I enjoy, it often opens up new avenues you'd have never imagined before.

How do you keep up with what is happening in the illustration world?

I guess I really don't. I am not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I have never really been up on the design / illustration world. I'll see interesting things here and there randomly and ask myself "How did I miss this person's work? It's brilliant!". I sometimes wonder if being exposed to more outside work would positively influence me in some way, but I suppose I would rather be informed by the vague sensibilities instilled in me from a lifetime of passive observation than be swayed by contemporary trends and design fads.

How do you stay inspired and are there any special links/books/magazines you use that you would like to share with us?

My inspiration comes mostly from within. All my life I have had these sort of hallucinations, if you can call them that, where I see very vivid images and colors. I have spent most of my time designing trying to somehow recreate those ideas in the real world.

You seem very busy with Tycho too, touring etc and I saw that you even visited Europe with your music. How has that experience been and are there plans to come back?

Music is a very powerful force in my life. It balances my creative energy and allows me to express ideas that I could never manifest with visual work alone. I am very grateful to be able to share both my audio and visual work with people through shows, I feel like it brings the whole thing together. I will certainly be coming back to play some shows in the future and I'll spend all of this coming January there, but this time just for fun, no working!

If you want to hear, buy or learn more about the music visit Tycho's Virb page or the Tycho website.

More examples at Scott's ISO50 website and don't forget to visit the ISO50 blog too for all recent work and news. Oh and one more thing, don't forget to tune into Layer Tennis at Coudal tomorrow for the match between Scott Hansen and Rob Cordiner.