Carter O’Sullivan is 26 living and from South London. Carter studied Illustration at Norwich University of the Arts, but with a leaning in Graphic Design and conceptual storytelling.

He is now a Designer at Beggars Group which has always been a dream of his since college. 

Our recent chat with Carter discusses his favourite campaigns and talks about the overlaps between visual creativity and music.

I’m currently working on SOAK - If I Never Know You Like This Again.

It’s been super fun working with Bridie across this entire project so far. It got announced on Tuesday the 25th of Jan. I was so ready for the world to see what we had come up with I think this third album by Bridie is just next level and I was super excited to get the chance to do all the design for this and was super sweet of Bridie to trust me to do the creative for an album that’s so personal to them.

I'M LOVING

Creatively at the moment, I’m loving FANZINES.

Mod, Punk any subculture to be honest. The level of niche-ness in a fanzine is so fascinating. The designs are always so raw and physical. It holds such an insight into the fans who make and buy the zine but also how the artist or culture is perceived by the public. 

FAVOURITE VIDEO

My all-time favourite music video is David Bowie - Life On Mars.

How can you just not look away when that video comes on. So simple but so captivating. 

BEST ARTWORK

I’ve always loved the album art for Kanye West - Yezzus.

I have always loved bringing the physical into digital spaces. I love when artists and campaigns use hand-written notes, Polaroids, sticky notes, physical objects.

It has an album still life artist quality to them. It makes the viewer look at them differently and give the objects more meaning. Yezzus also reminds me of the fantastic Blue Monday 12” Peter Savile designed based on the floppy disc. 

RECENT CAMPAIGN

The most recent campaign I’ve enjoyed working on has been Helado Negro’s latest album FAR IN on 4AD.

It has been a joy to work on. The album was one of my top albums of 2021 so to be the art director on the campaign was a dream. We had such fun creating interactive experiences for this such as designing Tarot Cards, online generated playlists based on your star sign and then creating an ice-cream stall that was travelling around New York and Mexico City. 

COLLAB

The most recent brand collab that caught my eye was The North Face x Gucci film for Highsnobiety.

My second love is trains (I created a short photographic zine of South London train networks in uni) I loved the quintessential British heritage and the high fashion meets the orient express element.

CREATIVE VIDEO

For me, the most creative and original music video of the past year is Madlib - Loose Goose.

I have always loved found-footage collage type film. It’s as much of an art piece as a story. This video in particular is so engaging as you watch and try to work out the narrative you have these physical sounds and heavy bass just blocking everything out in your surroundings and drawing you into the video. 

LOGO LOVE

I wish I’d designed the artist logo for Arctic Monkeys.

They’re my favourite band of all time and who wouldn’t want to design a logo for their favourite band. 

GO FOLLOW

The one artist you should follow on Instagram is Delilah Holliday.

She’s an incredible producer, singer and songwriter from North London. She used to be a singer in the punk band Skinny Girl Diet but has now embarked on this beautiful solo project creating this minimal emotional trip-hop type of song.

I was lucky enough to work on some of the designs for her last project Collective Consciousness so if you haven’t checked it out you definitely should.

ICONIC

The most iconic music photograph is David Bowie 1973 - Masayoshi Sukita.

This entire photoshoot blew my mind as a child. It was so colourful and out-worldly I just couldn’t look away and wanted to know more! I like to think I had the same reaction as when the images first came out