B for Brilliant

Steve Price is a design director who founded Plan-B Studio in 2000 to be a freelance design practise. He specialises in identity design, print and publication, digital, moving image and art direction for print and screen. He works for clients in the fashion, music, PR, film, banking & business, NGO and mobile communications sectors.

'As an individual it is impossible not to be influenced by fashion, music, style and culture. As a designer it is important to try and explore and constrain that influence to create work that is fundamentally about simplicity and functionality. The emphasis should always be about what you can subtract, not add.'

1976
Steve Price born in Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham, UK. But only just; he had his stomach pumped twice to remove the 'sack' he'd swallow/eaten on his way out. Nice.

1981
Steve records his first memory of enjoying typography (I realised this later at 25, not aged 6). Using the flattened (soft) side of the HB pencil he remembers writing the word 'off' and sitting back admiring how it looked. He then got squashed at a party by a fat kid who fractured his fibia; his parents sent him to bed that night thinking that he was exaggerating.

1982
Not long after that 'off' incident, Steve stole a double decker, ate it in the toilet only to be caught trying to flush it away.

1983
Steve decided to teach a bully in his class a lesson by stabbing a bobbing needle in his arm during a 'wet break'.

1988
Senior school didn't daunt Steve, he had a girlfriend in the year above for lunchtime breaks. She has since found him on facebook and was the second person she added to her friends list. Not that surprising? Read the next entry...

1989
Price family relocate to Kent. Steve returned a few times to visit friends, but had to spend most of his time loosing what little 'brummy' accent he did have in to a cockneyguezzafootballlovinallwhiteallwhite, so save getting beaten up.

1991
Mrs Everest, Steve's [then] art teacher pulls him aside in to her cupboard and gives him what for. No, not like that. She told him that if he just tried he would actually be really good at this art thing. What a saviour - Steve has much to thank her for.

1995
Kent Institute of Art and Design accept a Pearl Jam resiting, Nirvana inspired, Radiohead 'I'm a creep', Alive 'I alone' loving 'art student through there doors for a foundation course in art & design. First day, and his summer project to build a chair collapses, literally, infront of everyone.

1998
Graduating from Nottingham Trent University with a First in Graphic Design (BA), Steve sets off in to the sunset/London. Well not quite. He stayed in Nottingham for six months; crashing on an attic room floor with no bed and no heating. During winter.

2000
Having graduated with an MA from Saint Martins Steve was made redundant twice in three months. So he decided that it would be safer for him to go it alone and July 31st 2000 marks the official birth of Plan-B Studio (Limited).

2008
Frustrated with the greed of the banking system, the politicians, the lies, the deceit, Steve decided (whilst running a workshop with students at the Arts Academy in Bergen) to design a range of t-shirts. Democrazy was born.

2009
March 19th Steve takes part in his first ever, non-commercial Exhibition with thirty other artists and designers in response to Affluenza (the book by Oliver James).

2010
Steve creates Project10 - a year long celebration for Plan-B Studio's tenth anniversary. Over the next year he will donate his time to work on projects for NGO/NFP's or with friends. More information here.