A part of the THOUGHTFUL 6 project involved Carrie, Ed, John, Lauren, Amy and Chris creating a ‘rough guide to the creative industries’. The rough guide is a resource for
14-19 year olds interested in a creative career in the North West.

Whilst we’re putting the finishing touches to it we thought we’d share with you a great interview Carrie and Lauren made with Pat Carroll.

Pat Carroll is a graphic designer, illustrator, image maker, painter and partner in design studio, CENTRAL STATION. He has worked with FACTORY RECORDS producing iconic images for Happy Mondays and Black Grape.

Central Station is a critically acclaimed creative team made up of Pat, his brother Matt and Karen Jackson. The sleeves Central Station created are seen as some of the most vibrant and bold designs commissioned by Factory.

Can you describe a typical day at work?
Long, generally. I mean we’ve always worked long hours, because this is what we do because we really enjoy doing it, we do it because we love doing it, we always have. So we don’t always connect it with the word work, because a lot of it is sort of fun and pleasurable at the same time, so we don’t kind of clock off really. I think that most people who are into creative thinking don’t clock off generally, they’re always thinking about stuff, always wrestling with a sort of a thought or an idea, so it’s kind of just a long day that just wanders here and there.

Why did you choose to work in the North?
Well originally when I finished my studies I went down to London, I lived and worked in London for five years. While I was at college I went down to London and I went round all the record companies. Well as a kid, I’ve always wanted to design record covers, there’s always been kind of little dreams that you kind of carry from being a kid and because we’ve always had music in the house, records, my brother had a collection of over three or four thousand albums in the house, so I went down to all the record companies while I was a student and at that time they all had art departments and I used to go down, spend time and let people know I was around. Fortunately as I was finishing college, one of the art directors of Phonogram records was setting up his own design company and he’d seen my work, I’d taken my portfolio down and we got on really well and he asked me if when I finished my degree if I’d come and work with him in his new studio, which is what I did and as a result of that I spent five years in London.

But, I work with my brother, at Central Station it’s me, Karen and my brother Matt and we’ve always kind of had this burning ambition to run our own design company and we knew we wanted to set that up in Manchester, we knew that we needed the experience to do that. So the work we wanted to do at that time was in London, so we all ended up working in London. I lived and worked there for five years, working on a whole range of things. But when we set up Central Station, we knew we wanted to set that up in Manchester, we wanted to live in Manchester. The Haçienda had just opened, so that played a big part in why we wanted to be back in Manchester and we like living in the North and we like the people in the North, not that we don’t get on with people in the South. A lot of the work we do today is based in London or it’s just around, we do a lot of work in Australia, but we like working in Manchester.

What qualifications do you have and what did you study?
I finished school and at sixteen, I did a foundation in art and design and after that I studied at a graphic design course and I eventually finished with a degree in graphic design, that’s what I specialised in.

What was you first job?
First job was working on a Boomtown Rats record sleeve and sort of as a young kid leaving college it was pretty exciting meeting Geldof, who at that time was a really sort of enigmatic and charismatic character, so it was pretty good.

Have there been any low points in your career?
Probably a low point in our career and also in Manchester’s history was when Factory Records went bankrupt. On a personal note, we were left owed quite a bit of money, but we were more bothered about the fact that such an iconic Manchester institution had hit the wall. You know, it’s no surprise to me that people are still interested and talk about Factory Records and what it did and what it created and what its kind of done for Manchester as well. So that was a low point.

What advice would you give a young graduate who wants to follow in your footsteps?
I’d advise them to be prepared to work really hard and that’s something we’ve always done, we’ve always put enjoyment and having a good time up there alongside working hard and like I said at the start of this conversation we’ve always worked long hours. We’ve always worked long weeks, there’s been months on end when we’ve worked right through a seven day week and sometimes we’re only getting two or three hours of sleep a night during those periods, so I’d say that you’ve got to be prepared to work hard, you’ve got to know that it’s something that you’re really interested in and passionate about, otherwise you’re going to find it tough. I think as well, that during the time that you do spend on your course and your study that you should try and use that period to become as confident as you can about who you are and what you’re doing, because confidence plays a big role in the world of creative thinking, that’s for sure.

What has been the highlight of your career?
There’s been loads, probably too many to bore you with, but obviously we’ve had certain aspirations as kids. We paint and we draw and we’ve had an exhibition, the first exhibition we had was at the MANCHESTER CITY ART GALLERY and we always had ambitions to exhibit our artwork in there, because we used to go there as kids and be amazed at this incredible place and that was something we always aspired to do, so we achieved that, so that’s a highlight. We’ve had other shows and other exhibitions that are similar kind of highlights. We always as kids, we’ve always watched films and telly and stuff like that, so we always had aspirations to produce film titles, because we were always pretty blown away by the stuff that we saw from the fifties and sixties and seventies, that sort of stuff. We’ve kind of achieved that, we’ve done TV titles and they’re the kind of things that you set yourself little targets and little goals and you hope that you’re going to hit some of them and we’ve been fortunate enough to hit most of them really. You know, only little personal things, but they’re the highlights.

What is your favourite Happy Mondays album cover?
Well, there’s a story behind all of them and there’s a time and a memory, so they’ll all kind of change on a day-to-day basis depending on what mood you’re in. But I suppose the best answer to that would be ‘BUMMED’, which was a portrait, a painting we did of Shaun. It was painted at a time when we were working on our first exhibition, ‘Hello Playmates’, which was a series of portraits of British radio and TV stars, and the commercial work we were doing had given us the space and financial freedom to spend more time working through the night on our own sort of fine art projects and paintings, so we were working on that at the time we were doing ‘Bummed’ and the painting we did of Shaun was a similar style to what we were doing for the exhibition. The crossover between our own particular personal interests, crossing paths with our commercial work was brilliant.

Thoughtful thanks to Pat Carroll for his time and Paul Lavin for filming and editing the interview.