Toying with paper

Continuing our series on fresh new design talent, VISI is proud to introduce Graham Wiles aka Urb-Ski, who is a South African paper toy engineer who debuted at last year’s Design Indaba Expo as an Emerging Designer. Yup, one of the things we have loved about profiling these hotshots is the incredible versatility we have found right here in our own country.

Who are you?

I am Graham Wiles, an aging kid with much to do and not enough time to do it.

Where do you live?

I was born in the Poizon City, Durban. Now I live in Cape Town with my beautifully talented lady, Lavanya Naidoo (be.net/lavanya), the ice-cold Atlantic, and the great white shark.

What did you want to be when you were a kid? 

A creative individual of some sort, but I’m sure that plan changed quite often with my short attention span.

What do you do now?

Monday to Friday, nine-to-five I work as an art designer for www.airush.com, which is an international kiteboarding brand with a little studio in Cape Town where I work overlooking Surfer’s Corner in Muizenberg. I work on everything from print publications, product, to social media and web design. Outside of that I make designer paper toys when I can www.urbskipapertoys.com and run www.thepit.co.za.  

What was the first thing you designed?

It depends how loosely you use the term, but I would confidently say that the first thing I designed, from concept and mock-up to final product, was 3D typography in high school as my final art piece. I’ve kept all of my sketchbooks since I was a kid, but few of those scribbles were ever seen as a finished product.

Should form follow function or should function follow form?

I like things to work, so I would go for form follows function. Pretty functional beats pretty useless, in my books.

What book/s are you reading at the moment?

As far as I know, Twitter hasn’t released a book yet. I have been reading their collection of short stories online though.

What do you covet most at the moment?

Time.

Do you feel that local design is well supported?

It is an industry, and every industry has it’s own unique set of unique pro’s and cons. If anything, I think the design industry, if not the world, is over saturated, and this brings challenges that will hopefully see us grow.

Advice for aspiring designers? 

Run. Cash is not king. Do what you love. Try something different. Fail better.

Do you consider yourself an artist?

Humans have a sneaky way of including themselves in seemingly desirable positions. I don’t consider myself an artist, although the dictionary might lead me to believe I am. I do, however, consider myself a “creative”, even though the dictionary says that that isn’t a thing I can be. Some people will debate it, but things change. Welcome to 21st-century English.

How awesome are you really?

Pretty fricking dismal, but that’s my problem.

More of VISI’s hot design talents featured at www.visi.co.za/fresh

Also check out this year’s Design Indaba Expo Emerging Creatives here.