Melbourne creative Matthew Pham is a busy guy with a whole stack projects and jobs on the go. By day you can find him designing at the ad agency Lifelounge, by night teaching multimedia applications and at any other hour of the day, drawing and illustrating.

Matt finds that he works best with a lot of coffee and elbow grease. He also sells t-shirts and takes on freelance illustration jobs. I don’t know how he finds the time!

Matt’s work featured here are mainly women or movies that he likes, and these are quite a different style than his day-to-day creative work. Matt explains that it is fun just illustrating for the love of it, when his advertising work is so heavily researched and with clear goals or objectives. Some of his own illustrations make it into projects down the track, and Matt describes that he definitely enjoys all aspects of his creative roles.

Check out Trophy Life for more of Matt’s illustration work and his cool t-shirts.

How have you got to where you are today?

I actually fell into design by accident, when I finished high school I thought I was going to become an economic statistician. I lasted one semester. Realising how boring work can be when money is your primary focus I decided to go down a path that I would actually enjoy.

However, like many graduate designers finding that first job was tough, and when I got my first break the job was soul sucking and boring. That’s when I started up Trophy Life so I could work on anything I wanted to.

In a few words, describe yourself…

I’m tall for an Asian but short for an Aussie.

What are you spending your time on at the moment?

Apart from my agency job I’m working a poster series on 1960/70’s classic movies and drawing for no good reason.

Do you have a ritual for getting into the creative mindset? Or a creative process?

I find it hard to get into a creative mind set, for me it’s not like switching a light on.

Instead I carry a diary around and write a lot of notes down and jot ideas that come to me at random times, so when I sit down to start working I feel like I’m in the right head space to start working.

What or who inspires you?

People who love what they do. It’s infectious. When you meet or read about these people that are genuinely passionate about how they spend their day. It’s not always a “job” as such; it’s more how they spend their life.

What are you most proud of?

It probably sounds a little lame but I’m most proud of my friends and family. I think they define me a lot better than anything I will ever achieve on my own.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

First it was to work at McDonald’s because I liked eating fries. And then I wanted to be a cartoonist. In then end I think my aspirations always revolved around trying to be immature for as long as possible.