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Dirty Pool Podcast - Ep42 - PLYFLD with Gav and Norm
Summary
Playfield's Gav and Norm discuss pinball as art, Riso printing, and why distinctive handmade branding beats AI-generated design.
Jeff Dodson hosts Gav and Norm of Playfield, a Nottingham-based creative collective with pinball collections, a Riso-printed artwork series, and a distinctive two-color branding approach. They discuss how the pinball hobby intersects with art, the value of handmade and distinctive branding over AI-generated design, and creative process. The episode is informal and digressive, with much of the discussion on art philosophy rather than pinball machines directly.
Highlights
- Norm and Gav's pinball collection has grown to around 15 machines, starting with Simpsons Pinball Party about six years ago.
- Each Riso color costs around 800 pounds, and the Riso machines are old enough that replacement drums are no longer sold new.
- Riso print runs are limited to about 50 copies per print, despite the technology being suited to much larger volumes.
- Playfield's Riso printer broke during the first batch run, requiring an engineer call-out costing several hundred pounds.
- Playfield's branding is built around a fixed two-color palette (dark blue and orange) to speed up creative decisions.
- Generic AI-generated pinball flyers and channel graphics are visually homogenous and lack distinctiveness.
- Pinball Minority Report hand-drawn MS Paint-style guest graphics make the channel instantly recognizable.
▶ Full Dirty Pool Podcast Playlist Gav and Norm are the two designers behind PLYFLD, creating pinball-inspired art simply because they love the medium. Gav comes from Aardman Animations, Norm runs WASTE, and together they're exploring pinball culture through art and design.
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