Johnny Hardstaff
Johnny Hardstaff is a director and designer. Hardstaff has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. Mass media clients include Sony, Philips, Radiohead, Toshiba, Sony PlayStation and the BBC.
Hardstaff's work has been broadcast worldwide and exhibited at major museums of modern art and cultural institutes including Tate Modern / NFT / ICA (London) / Laforet Museum (Tokyo) / Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) / ACMI (Melbourne) / MOMA (San Francisco) / V&A Museum (London) and the Palace of Fine Arts (San Francisco). His first retrospective was held at the Zero One Design Center (Seoul) in 2004.
Hardstaff initially studied Graphic Design at St. Martins School of Art, his distinctive approach to graphic media nurtured within the maverick left-field climate then typical of St. Martins design provision. Upon graduation he experimented with a variety of media to develop innovative approaches in moving image. As a result, Hardstaff was featured in the Cannes New Directors Showcase, awarded Creative Reviews 'Creative Futures' for moving image and subsequently signed to RSA Films for commercial representation.
Amongst his most notable works to date remain 'History of Gaming' and 'Future of Gaming' (two politically provocative short films designed to first engender then test corporate patronage, now inducted into the National Film Archive), the Radiohead film 'Like Spinning Plates' (long format two track experimental music video), a contemporary raft of innovative design based commercials (Sony / Asics / Orange / MTV etc) and the 2010 future noir short film 'DarkRoom' (Philips 'Parallel Lines').
As displayed within his widely documented canon of work, he remains firmly committed to expanding graphic horizons, working both professionally and whenever possible within design education to do so. Johnny Hardstaff's co-authored book 'Re-Imagining Animation: The Changing Face of the Moving Image' (AVA Academia) was first published in 2008. Hardstaff lives in London and is currently a very occasional Visiting Lecturer in Graphic Design at the Manchester School of Art.