Some designers arrive at their practice through tidy, linear paths; others piece it together through half-planned shifts, chance encounters, or even a hidden back door. Elliott Elder, the co-founder and designer behind UNCANNY, lands little in all of them. After studying at Kingston — an environment that nudged students toward ad-world thinking — his early work drifted toward tech experiments, spinning posters and live-drawn layouts powered by Arduino boards. The “art and tech” cliché, as he calls it, was unavoidable, but it planted a kind of critical awareness that still colours his work today.
UNCANNY, the studio he now runs with photographer and co-founder George, grew out of the strange mid-COVID years: two people blending very different skill sets, faking it on set until it became real, and slowly shaping a practice that sits somewhere between design, typography, photography and directing.
I had the pleasure of virtually chatting with Elliott about how he handles the pressure of music work, listens his way into type decisions, how UNCANNY became the place where all these instincts finally sit together, and why typography still matters even when no one in the room seems to care.
AW: Hi Elliott, before we get started, could you tell me a bit more about yourself and your design background?
EE: I’m a designer & director from London. I studied graphic design at Kingston School of Art about five-ish years ago. Since around college, I was pretty dead-set on being a graphic designer, which, much like everyone else at that age, meant saving up for a Wacom tablet and painting on Photoshop.
Little did I know that it’d in actuality mean spending 80% of one’s time writing emails (I’m writing this in an email right now) I went to a super ‘ideas-first’ university – while I was there (think the tutors have shuffled around since) it was very much prodding us towards being ad/creative types which I struggled with a little – but it definitely pushed me towards a more critical position where my work was somewhat more conceptually led than prior to studying there.
A lot of posters with Arduino / Raspberry-Pi components that made them spin or were drawn in real time, etc. Fell very much into the cliche ‘intersection of art and technology type’ which I’m hopefully slightly less annoying about now, but I guess there’s hopefully some level of critical thought concerning technology in my work/studies, even if it’s leaving some more negative space as a haven from one’s scrolling.
After graduating, I worked very briefly in tech as a designer and then in slightly more fashion territories before I met George, and we formed our studio UNCANNY on the tail end of COVID. Our practice sort of combines his work as a photographer and mine as a designer. We then walked on set and pretended to be directors, and now we’re doing that mainly to keep the lights on.
AW: Your practice works a lot with music artists and lifestyle brands; some of them are dream clients for many. What’s it like, working in that sort of space?
EE: There’s definitely some additional hurdles to overcome, particularly in music – there’s a pressure to not bottle it, and there’s for sure competing intentions at play – everyone in the room is basically hoping to walk out with a portfolio worthy project so there’s a lot of talking and clarifications to make sure the project is right for everyone at hand. I used to be a lot more stubborn, but as I’m growing up, I’ve realised just how important it is when working on an album cover to truly do justice to the artist’s intentions.
It’s really easy to get swept up in idolising other designers with house styles so strong that they effortlessly collaborate with musicians as they tar each other with their brush in a shared vision. I’d love to achieve this, and in rare cases I feel like I get close to – but 95% of the time I came to the realisation that I’m making work that visualises what could be 2-3 years of writing, recording, mixing, tracknaming etc – who am I to force it to look a certain way? For sure, challenging them visually is a must, but learning when to pick battles is important.
If I walk away and it’s not exactly how I want it to be, I can check my emails and move on to the next one. If the design isn’t exactly how the artist wanted, they have a physical, 12-inch object / digital image, quite literally tied to their name/pseudonym for a near eternity. The cards are stacked against us to some degree, it’s our job to see their vision through, it’s easy to forget that sometimes, I find.
AW: I’m interested to know how you approach type. Do you have a systematic approach or perhaps something less defined?
EE: No real, clearly defined systematic approach at play, I think in general I’ll listen to the music on a loop, say when working on something custom and try and form so basic visual connections to what I’m hearing – babies’ first psychology stuff like bouba/kiki or whatever it’s called.
I think in general my design practice takes the shape of hyper mathematical, weaponised autism, but then hopefully offset by turning the grid off, physical flourishes or experimental materials.
AW: Could you tell me more about UNCANNY?
EE: UNCANNY’s sort of what we’re slowly moving everything over to. It started as mentioned above, when George and I met in COVID, working on animated/experimental film projects before we basically conned some commissioners into thinking we were directors. George is a very experienced photographer, and I came at it from more of a design/edit angle. A lot of our work, I’d like to think, has a very photographic / design feel to it, particularly in the structure, a lot of our early films practically feel like you were flipping through a photobook.
For a good few years, George stopped shooting photos, and I put design down (Freelance design’s not the easiest way to keep the lights on.) We’d sort of Trojan horsed these two skills into video projects to make us look like a good pick.
We’re now very much embracing these distinct practices and have been picking up some more standalone commercial design/photo projects alongside video.
AW: It’s clear that you produce high-quality and directed visuals and film, but what about your perspective on type? This can easily take a back seat sometimes, but our POV is that it needs to complete the picture and match the rest of the narrative, thoughts?
EE: Yeah, next to no one seems to care about typography on a day-to-day basis in the general field/level I’m working in – it’s brilliant. The bar’s nearly on the floor, and expectations are low. I honestly think it’s what kept me in work for a good few years. It’s, I guess, a totally different style of work. So much of film (at my level, not talking about the greats) is so fast. Stuff’s written, briefed, shot and edited in the span of a month. Type design and layout are something that always require time (to me anyway).
Be it sitting on something for a while and cracking its faults, or the physical labour of drawing/crafting letterforms. I guess that disparity is why perhaps there’s a backseat/lack of admiration for graphic designers in film. Honestly, it’s nice not to be in a room full of graphic designers, though.
I think typography, of course, is integral to our film works in aesthetically setting the tone or conveying a sense of narrative. A lot of our work often doesn’t have that overt ‘plot’. We’ve tended to skirt around that, probably due to some inferiority complex. I guess some of our work for the band HONESTY kind of showcases how we aim to use typography to complement that narrative sidestep, how to convey peace, miasma, dread, or grief through physical applications of typography in film.
AW: Any upcoming projects we should watch out for?
EE: Working on green deck in Balatro, stuck on white stake currently.
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