Interview: YUK FUN
Lucy Cheung and Patrick Gildersleeves are the founders of YUK FUN, an independent design brand they run from their home studio in Portslade-by-Sea on the south coast of England.
The design duo launched YUK FUN in 2014 and have kept a love of drawing, animals, colour and, most importantly, fun at the heart of the studio ever since. We caught up with Lucy and Patrick to find out more…
Hi Lucy and Patrick! Let’s start at the very beginning. Were you both creative as children?
Lucy: I feel like wasn’t unusually creative, just a normal amount. Kids are always making art and drawing. It’s so normal then. It’s only when you get older that people start asking "Why are you doing that?".
Patrick: I often read interviews where people say “I’ve been drawing since I was a kid” but hasn’t everyone? I used to do loads of drawing and my parents were always encouraging. When I was at primary school, for some reason my mum and dad would let me have three friends round at the same time and we’d do drawing competitions. They would choose a prompt and we would all have to draw it and decide who did the best one. Then there is always a weird period when you are a teenager and making art suddenly becomes less normal as people become more self-conscious about whether they are “good” or not.
Did your schools teach you about different jobs within the creative industries?
Lucy: I remember doing art at after-school clubs but it was always seen as a hobby rather than a career. We would do lots of papier mâché and things but we were never told that you could go into prop making for example. Even at university, they never mentioned anything that was going to happen after we graduated. We have just sort of had to find our own way.
Patrick: I don’t remember any after-school clubs and I don’t remember anyone saying you could be an illustrator or even a graphic designer. At school, I said I was interested in art and they said “Ah, you could be an architect!”. You surely have to be pretty good at maths too for that though. The art resources were good - we had lots of materials - but the career advice was the bare minimum.
You met while studying Art and Design at Leeds Met University. What was your time at art school like?
Lucy: On our degree course, you could go to the other departments like photography and use their stuff. I don’t know why but I think ours was the only course you could do that on. We didn’t need to pay for any materials either so that was good. The worst thing about the course was having to explain what you were doing and why you were doing it. Just saying “because I wanted to” wasn’t a good enough answer.
Patrick: You could come in whenever you wanted and they just left us alone most of the time. There was a lecture once a week and you would have to do a presentation once a term but that was it. There were optional workshops too with visiting artists who came in and taught us about things like making videos and building sculptures.
Did the openness of the course help you figure out what you wanted to do after university?
Lucy: It was good in the way that they left you to discover what you were interested in yourself and you had to be self-motivated. I appreciated that I wasn’t pushed into doing one thing or the other as I feel like I wouldn’t have liked it if it had been more strict.
Patrick: I think the freedom it allowed you was probably really good for some people - I enjoyed it - but probably not that great for people who needed a little push.
Lucy: We were talking the other day and I asked if you wanted to be an illustrator after you finished but you thought you were more of an artist.
Patrick: Yeah, I did. If I could be anything, I would just be this magical artist person who went around putting on exhibitions, doing fun stuff and making clothes - I’d still like to make clothes.
When did you decide to start working together?
Patrick: I graduated in 2007, Lucy graduated in 2008 and then we left Leeds and came to Brighton. We did loads of different, completely un-arty and sometimes quite unpleasant jobs until quite recently.
Lucy: We were always doing our own artwork in the evenings and weekends and trying to do exhibitions and things like that. Then one Summer I saw something about how you could get a creative business loan in Brighton. Patrick had just done some commissions for a kid’s t-shirt brand and I thought we could make and sell our own t-shirt.
Patrick: If someone is running a decent-looking kids company and they have enough faith in my designs that they want to pay me then why can’t we just make our own however we like? We were also struggling to find clothes we liked. You would go out shopping there wasn’t anything which looked like giant kids’ clothing which is basically what we wanted.
Is there anything you would change about your career so far?
Patrick: It’s a tricky one that. I was going to say that I wish we had started YUK FUN earlier because I did a lot of crap part-time jobs but maybe it wouldn’t seem as good now if I hadn’t.
Lucy: Everything has come together. I think that doing rubbish illustration jobs for no money was all a learning curve. There is so much more information out there now for illustrators and artists but when we graduated it didn’t seem like there was anywhere we could go for information. Instagram wasn’t even a thing.
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We are living in great times now. You can find all the information you need on the internet.
Patrick: I remember going into Borders and trying to find email addresses for art directors in magazines. I had no idea of any other way to find contact details.
Lucy: Didn’t you also have a physical portfolio you took to agencies?
Patrick: I took it to one agency and they said “This isn’t very professional”. I used to work with pencils and felt tip pens after art school so I think I just stuck drawings onto a bit of mount-board.
Lucy: We are living in great times now. You can find all the information you need on the internet. It’s so much easier to get your work seen, all you have to do is email someone.
What has been the biggest challenge you have overcome during your creative career?
Lucy: Having the motivation to keep going when things don’t seem to be going anywhere is always a challenge. Getting rejected from things you are applying to like exhibitions and fairs or struggling to sell anything can be really depressing. I’ve cried over it. It would be easy to give up but you just have to keep going and have faith that your work is good.
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People might look at our stuff and think we are doing better than we are and that is the problem with social media - you don’t see everything.
Patrick: We used to do a lot of art fairs before we were together as YUK FUN and you’d come back from them having made like £2. You might just have picked a bad art fair or one that just wasn’t the right fit but not selling anything can be tough. One other thing to be clear on is that we started YUK FUN in 2014 and it is only now that I don’t have another job and Lucy still works part-time. Money is building up but it is not completely flowing. We are not quite going on holiday in five-star hotels in Barbados. People might look at our stuff and think we are doing better than we are and that is the problem with social media - you don’t see everything.
What advice would you have for someone wanting to follow a similar career path?
Lucy: If you feel like you are not getting anywhere then do something for yourself. Put on your own exhibition or start a drawing meet-up. If no one is commissioning you to do editorial illustrations for a magazine then make your own magazine! Also, getting to know people and making friends is the most important thing.
Patrick: It is nice to have friends. Friends are always the first people who will ask you to help out with stuff or you can ask to help out with stuff. That’s how I feel about all the people we have met through doing art fairs and markets. Being able to talk to other people about how they are getting on makes you feel better when times are a bit rough.
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