Sam Gilbey

Sam Gilbey is a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and art director. He has created graphics and illustrations, designed websites, and/or provided art direction for many well-known clients and brands, including Sony, Weetabix, The University of Manchester, MTV, O2, The BBC, Cadbury, Tiger Aspect Productions, Working Title and Motorola. He has worked with several respected design agencies including LBi, Preloaded, CMW Interacitve and AIS London.

A meticulous graphic designer, Sam loves to create in a wide range of styles, whether that's a cleanly designed, flexible template for a large scale accessible website, or letting loose on an experimental microsite. But rather than being restricted to the web, he also designs for print, and has created logos and branding solutions. Creativity drives him, not the medium.

Sam's unique illustrations have appeared in numerous publications, both on and offline all over the globe, from magazines such as Computer Arts and Official Playstation Magazine, to several books, exhibitions and comics. His observational, colourful and distinct painterly style often draws upon, and celebrates popular culture, whether that's movies, videogames, and/or the occassional large robot. He produced numerous illustrations for both the set and key scenes of No Heroics, an ITV sitcom produced by Tiger Aspect Productions, airing in September 2008 on ITV2. Working Title recently commissioned Sam to create an illustration for a test shoot of 'Paul', the forthcoming movie project from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, with Greg 'Superbad' Mottola directing.

Sam has also written, designed and illustrated dozens of articles for numerous creative industry magazines over the last few years. These include Computer Arts, Advanced Photoshop, Web Designer and Official Corel Painter Magazine, on everything from Photoshop, Painter and Illustrator software, to what inspires and motivates some of the top individuals and studios working in the creative industry today.

From 2003, Sam was first music editor, then senior editor for Pixelsurgeon, the popular design and art news portal, until the site finally closed in late 2007 (more info here). He reviewed dozens of albums, movies and videogames for the site, and interviewed a number of musicians, movie directors and comedians, including Roots Manuva, Nitin Sawhney, The Cinematic Orchestra, Edgar Wright and Dave Gorman. He was also a key contributor to the popular Audiosurgeon podcasts, and sourced and edited the music. Following the closure of Pixelsurgeon, Sam was invited to post news at popular creative industry site, Computerlove.
He spoke alongside Pixelsurgeon's Jason Arber and Richard May at Semi Permanent London in 2005, took part in the WIWP Remixed exhibition in 2005, and had his work shown at BD4D Mannheim in 2004. His Shaun of the Dead illustration appeared in IDW's official graphic novel adaptation of the movie, and director Edgar Wright has a canvas of both that and Sam's Hot Fuzz piece in his office. Sam Gilbey Limited was officially set up in July 2008.

Sam lives in Bedford, England, with his fiancée and videogame consoles.