Being one of the 3 owners of GoMedia, and the main author of the GoMediazine, Jeff Finley shouldn’t be a stranger to you. His works constantly pop into the Tee of the day in Emptess and you can easily find his funky skull drawing on the internet. Apart from the illustration, he also do amazing works for print and web. Jeff kindly accepted an interview with TFS and share his view and his path with us.
TFS: The Familiar Strangers
JF: Jeff Finley
TFS: Can you tell us about a bit of your background? How you turn out to be the nowadays “Jeff Finley”? Are you fulfilling your childhood dream??
JF: Well, I grew up being the “art guy” as they say. Drawing and computers were my passion from an early age, so yes you could say I’m fulfilling my childhood dream. I’m lucky, because I know a lot of people my age still don’t even know what they want to do as a career. To get here, I went to art school at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and got a Bachelor’s in Media Arts and Animation. I had wanted to make video games for a living. Which I still think would be cool to do some time, it just wasn’t in the cards when I graduated. I found more enjoyment out of graphic design. I didn’t have to work on the same project for months and I liked that.
Shirt design for ozzfest
TFS: You just had a big step in your life and had your wedding on 27th Sept. How do you feel about it? Will it affect your working style?
JF: Yes I did, I am actually the only married person at Go Media. I feel great about it, I have been with Kim for 5 years and we’re great together. As far as affecting my working style, not really. It’s been the same for a while. We both work at Go Media from 10-6 and come home and make dinner and do whatever else we need to do.
(Actually Jeff has a site about his wedding)
Shirt design for GoMedia, Jedidiah, GoMeda and Bravado
TFS: What is your daily routine??
JF: Wake up around 9:15am and shower and eat breakfast. Kim is also trying to get ready for work at the same time and we have only one bathroom. We often show up 5 minutes late as we rush to work bickering about the traffic. It’s not always pleasant for the morning commute, but luckily the drive is only 10 minutes. I usually check my email first, which then leads to a handful of different distractions as I take care of pressing needs via email. I’ll check my project queue and decide what I want to work on that day. I tend to bounce back and forth between multiple projects and tasks. I between projects I try to find time to write blog articles for the GoMediaZine, keep up with the development of Arsenal v2.0 and Go Media v5.0 and developing products for the Arsenal. There’s usually a lot to be done, even if we’re slow.
The Construction Process of GoMedia New Office
TFS: I read the Twitter interview and know that you are a movie buff. What are your favourite movies? And do u constantly draw inspiration from movies?
JF: I’m on Netflix, and I’m really picky about what I watch because I don’t have enough time to watch all the films I want. My queue hovers around 200 all the time. I do draw inspiration from my films for sure, but I don’t think it has a direct visual influence.
I’ll paste the list of my favorite films: The 7 Up Series, 21 Grams, Adaptation, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, A History of Violence, All or Nothing, American Movie, Amores Perros, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Blue Velvet, The Business of Being Born, BIKE, Cinemania, Crash, Decline of Western Civilization 1-3, The Devil & Daniel Johnston, Donnie Darko, Elephant, Eraserhead, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fast Food Nation, Fat Girl, Freaks, Fucking Åmål, Funny Ha Ha, Garden State, Ghost World, Great World of Sound, Grizzly Man, Gummo, Half Nelson, High Fidelity, I Am a Promise, Inland Empire, Jesus Camp, Joe Kid on a Sting Ray, Julien Donkey-Boy, Kissing on the Mouth, King of Kong, L’Enfant, Made in Britain, Masculin Feminin, Meantime, Mulholland Drive, My Kid Could Paint That, Naked, Napoleon Dynamite, Nosferatu, Office Space, Old Joy, Palidromes, Pan’s Labyrinth, Phenomena, Pi, The Puffy Chair, Say Anything, School of Rock, Scum, Secrets and Lies, Spellbound, Starbucking, Stroszek, Super Size Me, Taxi to the Dark Side, Talk to Her, The Celebration, The Firm, The Freshest Kids, The White Diamond, Waking Life, The War Zone, Wild at Heart, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Word Wars
Filmmakers: Alan Clarke, Alejandro Inarritu, Andrew Bujalski, Chris Cunningham, David Lynch, Duplass Brothers, Joe Swanberg, Harmony Korine, Michel Gondry, Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, Werner Herzog
Shirt design for Trivium, design for Harley
TFS: Go Media offers design help via Twitter, this is very generous and is pretty new in the industry. So how is it going? Are you guys stuff with lots of lots of questions?
JF: Well, we don’t have nearly as much questions as we thought. We get a handful every day, which we try to answer.
The Famous Bold is Beautiful Tee Shirt on DBH
TFS: Do you have any “strangers” side? Another side few people know? Or people don’t have chance to know?
JF: I don’t really ever discuss my band. I play drums for By Bread Alone and I really love it. We play positive punk rock with a slight folk influence. It’s fun, but I never really talk about it much because there isn’t anything for people to see or hear yet. Perhaps when we have some good recordings I’ll let people know about it.
Sketches on Moleskin by Jeff
TFS: We see you have some 3d type in your artwork sometimes.. Are you going to develop a new style? Or just play around with it?
JF: I’m constantly reinventing myself. Don’t be surprised if you see a new style. I am not satisfied with doing the same thing all the time.
Typography for Funkrush
TFS: What is the best (apart from wedding) and worst moment in your career so far?
JF: Well, it’s hard to say, I’d say getting this new building / office space is a great achievement for us. It makes me feel like we’re doing something right!
TFS: We know what project you are doing in the Go Media Zine, so can you tell us a bit about your future plan? And project you will start soon?
JF: Right now I’m focused on Arsenal 2.0 and my colleagues are working on Go Media v5.0. Arsenal 2 is taking a long time, but it’s almost done. I’d say 80%. We hope to have it up in time for Christmas. In the future, we want to start selling a little bit of software too. As well as making sure we’re landing sweet design jobs for clients we like.
Typography by Jeff
TFS: Any advice for new designers?
JF: Just keep at it, and get really good at one thing or do something different than everyone else. Put your own spin on things and you’ll stand out. And don’t be afraid to promote yourself!
Thanks Jeff for the time, and if you want to find our more about Jeff, here are the links:
Jeff Finley Resources:
Personal page:
Interviews:
Follow Jeff Finley in Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jeff_finley
Interesting read! Always can learn something from “JF” and the rest of the GoMedia team.
Great interview hun! Nice answer to the daily routine question haha.