Guest Lecture: Designer Republic
This week we had a guest lecture from the designers republic, this was a huge thing because they were very influential back in the 80's and worked with publications like the émigré magazine, a huge influence in graphic design history. The founder Ian Anderson told us 1 rule to success, never reveal what you know. In a way I expected this but also I believed that graphic design in a studio was about sharing your work and combining multiple ideas.
The first thing he showed us was one of his first pieces of work as the designers republic, his first 12" album cover for the band age of china (1986), this was made before computers so the whole album cover was hand drawn apart from the starts you can see and the word kiss in the top right hand corner, they were done using lettraset.
I know this type of work is old and before computers but I really don’t like the effect they have, although the fact that they were completely hand drawn is impressive.
Ian Anderson was a philosopher and he got into design because he was in bands, and because f this every band needs branding and material to advertise and he ended up doing this for his own bands. This went from person to person and eventually he was asked by other bands to o this kind of work for them. He set designers republic up to get some funding because it was costing record companies a lot of money because of metallic, they didn’t have any other method and didn’t know just how expensive they were to create.
The next piece of work he showed us was an architecture related piece named 2D-3D. This later became a book...
Again this is not a piece f work that interested me in my own design influences but I did think the angles and geometric shapes in this image were exiting and reflected the modernist influence.
A piece I liked but didn’t manage to get a photo of was aim low and miss, it was created based n the response to how we perceive success, it was used for his personal products. I liked this because of the concept behind it. I think concepts are important when designing, this is why in my studio work I always have a really string concept to develop my idea to its full potential.
The next piece I liked, I thought the type was eye-catching and although difficult to read it had the technological look that they were able to create because of the bitmap type they had, it was a record cover....
The image below at first I didn’t really understand, the concept, image or idea, but then when he explained it in more detail it made sense, this piece is for the peoples bureau, it was the shop in which designers republic sell their merchandise, they thought about how bands sell merchandise so why don’t they? it started as an experiment as Ian Anderson is interested in the influence of consumerism and why we do what we do, but the shop became poplar so they kept it open as a mechanise shop. it was about how design is all to do with problem soling and communicating a solution and to do this you have to understand the audience, and too use this to work out trends and what wont work.
the peoples beurau
The music business in 2004 was falling on its knees and coke at the time was doing the N5 project, this was where they get 1 designer or design agency from the 5 nations to work on 1 project and they connect it to the past and modernism. This was when the campaign of ' music on the coke side of life' appeared.
One thing Ian Anderson left us on was that you don’t have to like your designs for them to be successful, he said this because thought his presentation he commented on stuff he didn’t like however believe that to believe in your design and concept you have to like it in some way to be able t push fro that idea.
It was help for the designer’s republic to come in and show some of their work because it made me able to see how they did design back then and the difference the computers make. I much prefer the computer way of working.
