272: Living at the Intersection of Art, Design & Digital Media with Julian Brown
- Diana Varma
- Oct 16
- 2 min read
Welcome back everybody!
We’re 6+ weeks into the fall semester and I have the great pleasure of teaching my first podcasting course at Toronto Metropolitan University! The course is called MDM Podcast Lab: Design, Develop Distribute with around 20 students actively working to create their own podcasts. It’s been so much fun to imagine what a more linear path to podcasting than my own experience would look like, and build a workshop-style course to help guide digital media students through the process; from a seedling of an idea through to a fully-realized podcast that considers technical, creative, and entrepreneurial facets.
As part of this course journey, I invited our guest today (Julian Brown) to have a conversation that I recorded live in class with students watching in real time to better understand the interview process, considering both what they might bring forward into their own podcasts, as well as what they would do differently. Julian is the perfect guest for this class full of tech-forward students, living at the centre of a Venn diagram of design, art and digital media.
Julian Brown is an independent motion designer and augmented-reality artist. His designs for clients like Cineplex & Sport Chek have won awards from Graphis, Adobe, The Webbys & more. His AR artworks have been exhibited internationally in galleries and public spaces. He’s also an RGD Board Member, an irreverent public speaker, and this one time he starred alongside his dog in a TV ad for pet food. It was adorable.
In this conversation, you'll hear how Julian and his wife, Amy Shackleton, work together to merge the worlds of fine art and digital media to create interactive installations. You'll also hear how the design space and the fine art space differ in terms of how and when creatives are compensated for their work.
You'll hear Julian’s thoughts on AI and all the ways in which it is both deeply problematic, as well as opportunistic. Julian also shares excellent, actionable money advice for young creatives.
Finally, I turn the tables on Julian and we play a little game of “Never Have I Ever”. ;)
Let’s jump right into the conversation…
Links to Julian's Work:
"Constraints" Q — Cineplex 'Hello Movies' project: https://onthechase.com/cineplex-hello-movies
"Fav Project" Q — UK residency AR project: https://onthechase.com/scan-for-surprise
UK AR project: https://vimeo.com/994987106
About Our Guest:
Julian Brown is an independent motion designer and augmented-reality artist. His designs for clients like Cineplex & Sport Chek have won awards from Graphis, Adobe, The Webbys & more. His AR artworks have been exhibited internationally in galleries and public spaces. He’s also an RGD Board Member, an irreverent public speaker, and this one time he starred alongside his dog in a TV ad for pet food. It was adorable.
---
Music:
Bubbles ( Lofi , Bright , Relaxed ) by HoliznaCC0 is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License.
Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle
