Cheeky, weird and downright rude 3D renders by designer Anton Hjertstedt

Graphic designer and It’s Nice That Graduate Anton Hjertstedt creates the kind of unexpected work we dream of finding. His website had us rubbing our eyes with joy, with 3D renders of the rude, the abstract and the plain bizarre.

Attending Norwich University of the Arts, art school provided the perfect opportunity for Anton to hone his skills: “I spent a lot of time in front of the computer where I developed a real obsession with creating images. So going to art school allowed me to keep on making and developing these images,” Anton says. It was the time university gave him that he feels most helped his progress. “I’ve had a great time at university. To have had three relatively carefree years where I’ve been able to focus on creating and doing things I enjoy has been tremendously fun.”

The best work to come out of Anton’s time in Norwich are his self-initiated projects, which he found allowed him more freedom: “The absence of any external pressure is something I find very enjoyable. That lets me have the most fun,” Anton explains. “One of these projects, Do Bats Lay Eggs or the Baby Bat Doesn’t Come out of a Egg. Or in Other Words Is a Bat a Mammal Like Us, is a book with hundreds of answers and questions, gathered online, regarding life and living. From the completely absurd to the seemingly obvious and mundane, the compilation of questions along with answers is an interesting look at the way people try to find answers in today’s modern age.”

He learned the importance of leaving an idea where it was early on in his degree. “My worst project was where I decided to depict the evolution of the hammer,” he says. “My initial excitement about hammers faded quickly, but I was too stubborn to give up and leave it… Looking back at it I’m still not too sure what happened there.”

The most significant lesson Anton has learned, however, is about how he works as a designer: “I’ve learned it’s completely fine to disregard what you have been told to do, at least in my case, and go off and do your own thing completely. I always had a sense of my own failure whenever I created things that didn’t fit in entirely with what had been set, but I came to realise that this didn’t matter and I shouldn’t do something I don’t want to do.”

It’s this refreshing approach that’s most visible in Anton’s portfolio, where he’s managed to establish a truly distinct style in his design work. Charmingly the person he’d like to show his work to is one of his parents. “They haven’t had much of an idea about what I’ve been doing these three years.”

Represent

We are very pleased that The It’s Nice That Graduates 2015 will once again be supported by Represent Recruitment. The graphic and digital design recruitment specialists have developed a peerless reputation working with designers of all levels and matching them up with the right positions in some of the top agencies around. Represent’s support has helped us grow the Graduate scheme over recent years and we are thrilled they have partnered with us again in 2015.

www.represent.uk.com