Barney Ibbotson and Stanley Chow grew up in Manchester and went to the same school where they became great friends.
They've followed similar paths, both pursuing a career in art and design. Barney is currently in his 10th year as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. His work focuses on line, detail and colour, and he's worked for people like the BBC, Electronic Arts and Penguin, creating murals, album covers, animation, window graphics, children's books, and more.
Stan began his career in fashion illustration, working for magazines like Just Seventeen and Sugar. In 2007, his art was spotted by Meg and Jack White of The White Stripes and that’s when his career really took off. Today, much of Stan's work is portraiture with him specialising in images of celebrities from the worlds of music, media and sport. And his clients include The New Yorker, Wired magazine and Saatchi and Saatchi.
Knowing they're both friends, we thought it would be interesting to get Barney and Stan together to talk about how they met and their different career paths. There are a lot of laughs in this episode. We loved hearing about their friendship through school, college and beyond. About driving around the UK in a Nissan Micra with a thousand mixtapes before the days of mobile phones and social media. And about football, managing bands and nearly making it big in the music industry.
