Sally Renshaw

Sally Renshaw is a British designer working for a tech company in Norway. She specialises in UX, and spends her 9-5 making apps and websites. Sally also made the Vegan Norway app for iOS and Android, which helps people find all the vegan friendly places to eat and shop in Norway. Even though app design is Sally’s bread and butter, she admits that her heart and education is in the world of illustration and animation. She is happiest when listening to good music and drawing cool stuff.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

Back in 2003 when I was doing my BTEC in fine art, our college art studio was where all the ‘alternative’ kids would hang out whenever they had the chance. Every lunch break all the drama kids and the music kids and all of us art weirdos would sit in the big airy room that had grotty old paint pots and sculptures made of willow all over the place eating soggy chips and gravy and planning out how to get a fake ID so we could get into the clubs in Manchester. We had one shitty portable CD player and would constantly fight about what music to listen to. We mostly ended up listening to either really chill ambient music or grime. Dizzy Rascals Boy in Da Corner was on all the time, before our tutor would get sick of it and switch over to Smooth FM (which i secretly also liked too). I fell in love with Grime music because of that album, and every time I hear it now it reminds me of the shit ‘feminist’ paintings I made back in art school and eating chips.

When I’m illustrating, the work just flows out of me and I feel like every brush stroke is kind of intuitive. It helps to have music on for this kind of creative work because the beat of the music can sometimes help you get into a bit of a trance. It’s like you are not really having to concentrate on your work or what you are listening to, you are just letting it flow. It’s of course completely different when I’m doing design for apps or websites. I have to think so much about functionality and technical stuff with UX so my head has to be really focused and I can’t really enjoy music the same way.

Tell us about your playlist:

Grime music has always been something I’ve loved since art school. I’m so happy that grime artists are starting to get more attention, but I also know that now when I talk about Grime people now think of artists like Stormzy, and like no offense to people who like Stormzys music but it isn’t really the sort of grime I personally listen to. I wanted to create a playlist that might help people explore some of the more unusual elements of grime music and the ways grime music can bleed into other genres too.