Designing with Crawler Graphics 

United Kingdom-based artist, Harry Crawford, has a distinctive eye for art and design. His creative career began 7 years ago and took off as he gained the opportunity to work with widely-known artists in the music industry. The VZN team caught up with Harry to learn more about his creative process and advice he would offer to other creatives. 

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What city/country are you based in?

I am currently based in Essex, UK. It’s a country just outside of London.

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What art form do you specialize in?

I primarily create my works through graphic design using Photoshop, but I also create paper collage pieces by hand. 

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How did you get into this area of art and design?

I started out designing YouTube banners for gamers purely as a hobby, not thinking that I would pursue it for that long. But as I improved and slowly built a following, I started to take it more seriously and tried to develop my own style. After designing banners for a few years, I felt that I hit a point where my art wasn’t evolving in terms of style, and I felt that I hit a dead end creatively. 

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I then started designing fan art for some of my favorite musicians using techniques that I’ve learned through the years of designing banners. During the first year of designing art for musicians, I already had artists that I listened to, commenting on my work and showing love. As I pursued this path, my passion for art and design grew immensely and it didn’t take long until I realized that this could be a possible career move for me. So, I ended up charging for my services and I’ve been working for musicians in the industry ever since.

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How long have you been designing? 

I’ve been creating artwork for around seven years in total, designing banners for around 2/3 years, and working for artists in the music industry for just over four years now.

 

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We absolutely love your work. How would you describe your designing style? 

If I could sum up my style in just a few words, I’d probably say complex in ideas, and clean in execution. Depending on the type of project and the guidelines given, I tend to prefer a cleaner approach to how I design the cover art and album packaging. However, I put a lot of thought and research into different aspects of each project I work on. You wouldn’t believe the amount of effort that can sometimes go into creating a cover that just shows a photo and a single text piece. 

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What inspires you the most when deciding what you’d like to create?

I can be inspired by a lot of things to be honest. The environment inspires me a lot when it comes to the texture of things, as texture is a key part of most of my art pieces. I am also inspired a lot by other artists, not only in the music industry, but also fashion designers and artists that specialize in type work. Currently I am a huge fan of the likes of Justin Wilson, Bryan Rivera, David Rudnick, and Jon Anderson to name a few.

 

What is your favorite artwork that you have created thus far? Why? 

This is a super hard question to be honest, but I am always very proud when I create collage pieces and covers by hand. There’s a bigger feeling of achievement in my opinion knowing that you have crafted something physically, rather than doing it through a software. But in terms of a client piece that’s my favorite, I’d probably have to say the album cover I created for a project by 24Hrs called “World on Fire.” The specific piece took a long time to bring together and there was a lot of back and forth in terms of ideas for the general concept and also revisions that needed to be made. I love how the final piece came out and I am very proud of that work. I was especially proud after seeing the project released and my artwork on posters and billboards around America. I think that’s got to be my favorite piece for sure.

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Is there a music artist or production company that you’d like to work with in the future?

I’ve been a fan of the music artists such as the 1975, Lil Wayne, Kanye, and Sam Hunt of late, so to be able to work with any of them in the future would be a blessing. I’ve been following Wiz Khalifa’s music for nearly 10 years now too, and as I’ve already worked with a few artists in Wiz’s is circle like Chevy Woods, Young Deji, and TheMxxxnlight, I guess that would be amazing to work with Wiz.

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For individuals that would like to try graphic design, what advice would you give them? 

First and foremost, the main advice I’d always give creative looking to build something for themselves is that they should create what they want and not what they think other people would like. It took me a while to realize that because creating things that you love definitely comes across in your work and I feel you’ll better develop your own style that way. An artist that creates what they think other people want to see, will just fall under traps like using trends and elements that a lot of other artists use. It’s pretty much impossible to grow a following this way and their work won’t be distinctive.

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Where can we find your art? 

I post all of my pieces on my Twitter and Instagram pages where you can find me at @crawlergraphics.

My portfolio contains my favorite and best projects, which you can find at crawlergraphics.com.