ARTWORK Alphabet International Triennial of Stage Poster
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A keynote speaker for the conference, Peter Saville
presented a recollection his career spent working at the awkard intersection
between art and commerce. Always a provocateur, he was disarmingly blunt
and engaging.
Peter Saville: I've been working now exactly 25 years.
I left college in 1978 and got involved in Factory (Records) that year.
That means I started producing things probably before some of you were born.
It's embarrassing standing up here and talking about something you did 20
years ago and thinking that a 25-year-old is thinking, 'Ugh, this is just
like a history lesson and it's not interesting.' But then, that first album
cover I did - Unknown Pleasures for Joy Division - still follows me around.
I see it everywhere. I even see it as a tattoo these days, which I think
is a great...commitment...(Laughs.)
There's kind of one thing I can say before you ask
me questions. The theme for this weekend is 'Creativity Now.' So before
coming here I was thinking. 'How do I feel about creativity?' I think my
feeling about creativity is that, in itself it's kind of fascinating and
intriguing, but it's not massively interesting to me. It's clever, and all
the time we see things that are 'clever.' But the things that I'm personally
most interested in are the kind of moments of creativity that help us understand
where we are or who we are at a moment in time. You can't define all things
for all people all the time, and what mattered for me 25 years ago, when
I was leaving college, is obviously totally different to what would matter
to someone in their early 20s now, because the world has changed a lot and
moved along. So in that sense, creativity and its relevance is just related
to the moment.
I had a kind of completely, um, unprofessional situation
when I started with Factory (Records). There was no client - there were
just some friends. We kind of came together to do something that we all
felt like doing. There was no business. There was no profitability. For
me, as a designer, there was no brief (of instructions). There was no one
to give me a brief. Well the brief to me was, 'What do I care about ?' So
I had a freedom to put on Joy Division covers, and then on New Order covers,
the things that I wanted (to see). I guess that I just kept my fingers crossed
that, if I wanted it then maybe someone else would like it or appreciate
it.
I think it's really important to hold onto some kind
of personal connection with the work that you do. There seems to be too
many professional situations where the designer or the creative person has
to distance themselves so completely from the product that they give up
trying to identify it by their own values. I think that is a really big
problem. Once your own values and the work you're doing part company...How
can you judge? You throw away the judging system. Obviously, I appreciate
that lots of people have to work in very disciplined, very demanding circumstances,
where their own freedom is left at the door. But I think, as a designer,
it's very difficult to continue when you lose any sense of yourself or your
values in your work.
As I've said, 25 years ago my concerns as a 20-year-old
leaving college were quite different to a young person's now. Actually,
my own concerns are very different now. Design has kind of transformed in
that period. When I looked around the U. K. 25 years ago, I thought it looked
a mess. I felt all kinds of things could look better. When I look around
the U. K. now, it looks like a designer's layout pad. And more often than
not I can't bear it. There's a piece of work in my (museum) show in London
that says, 'Be Careful What You Wish For.' That sums up my feelings about
what has happened with design in Britain.
But America is different. Just the brief ride from
JFK into Manhattan yesterday reminded me that design hasn't quite taken
over the U.S. yet! (Laughter.) But it's very contradictory, because as I
came into Manhattan, I saw a kind of corporate and social design, which
actually is stronger here than it was in Britain. As you get across Manhattan,
you begin to see big status design and great lettering outside municipal
buildings, and you think, 'Hmm, they do have it', I guess you all, living
here, working here, understand better than a visitor does just what the
public perception of design is, and why is it sometimes difficult to make
things happen, and then in other situations it's very easy.
But at home in Britain, I've gotten a bit exhausted
by (design). I've worked mainly through two eras, two decades. In the '80s
there was a sense of challenge. As a designer you had to enter into a kind
of act of coercion to get business to appreciate that making things look
better would ultimately pay back. Malcolm Garrett, who some of you may know,
(and I) were in school together and we set out working together designing
for music... Malcolm and I both had this naive post-teen ideal that things
could be better and could look better. We looked in the history books and
we saw how things could be done and we didn't understand why they weren't
done that way. So we just set out to do it ourselves. And everything was
a little bit of a battle. And sometimes you had to do it kind of covertly
and in a way, somehow trick the system with what you were doing.
Then there was a recession - '92 to '93. Coming out
of that recession a new generation of marketing people in the U. K. we call
them 'design buyers' - suddenly emerged. And they didn't need to be coerced.
In fact, they embraced design. At first I thought, 'Wow this is great.'
Slowly I started to think it wasn't so great. The last few years I've seen,
certainly in Europe, design become the new advertising. That, as consumer
belief in advertising completely disintegrated, and advertising took on
a new role as a kind of irritating entertainer, design took it's place.
Marketing people figured out that you could sell things by making it look
as if they were better. This isn't really design. It's like a 'design look'
There is an untold hunger and demand for a 'design look' in the U. K. now.
Most of the things that are being sold aren't any better than they were
the year before. They just look like they're better.
In my perception of myself working, I felt like a rebel
becoming a mercenary. I used to fight for things that I believed in, and
these days you just get paid to kill people. I don't like doing it. If I
actually had a part of a business that had a responsibility to 40 or 50
people, I probably wouldn't have any choice. If I got married and had a
family, I probably wouldn't have any choice. I sympathize with my contempories
who basically have to earn a living. I kind of willfully continued behaving
like a 20 year old. It's not really very grown up (to be) doing what you
feel. I appreciate that. Those of you who are grown ups, I'm not criticizing
what you do. (Laughter.) I'm not! It's very easy to be critical and stand
on the sidelines and take snipes at things. I learned a lot when I was at
Pentagram in London. I had two years with some grown-ups. And as the design
profession goes, Pentagram do as good a job you can of making a profitable
design company. I left primarily because I was just hopeless at accepting
the realities of profitability. So I'm not saying, 'Oh, why don't you do
things my way?'
Creative Review magazine in the U. K. Its readers voted
me 'the graphic designer they most admire.' They did the same thing last
year. I don't really know why, because I don't even do any work anymore!
(laughter.) Seriously, I don't! I don't know what they're judging it from.
Professionally, I'm quite invisible these days. I don't even have a studio
anymore. I have one assistant. And it worries me a little bit, because the
work that people are judging (me) off is record covers, and that isn't graphic
design. It's not the design profession at all. And my approach to being
a designer has been completely and utterly unprofessional, from a point
of view of being non-profitability. So I worry about younger designers looking
at my work and holding me up as an example. Because I actually think it's
quite...well not dangerous but a little bit misleading.
When you work with a pop group, somebody calls the
shots. It's quite obvious, and you can guess who it is. I've been working
with Pulp recently, and if you work with Pulp, Jarvis Cocker is the client.
Joy Division were very democratic, and they were just four boys who were
friends. But Ian Curtis wrote the songs, and Ian had to sing them. By virtue
of that, Ian was the client. As a designer you're performing a service,
and you have to identify who it's for. When Ian died, he left behind three
people, none of whom wanted to be that person. So none of them wanted to
talk about the work that I had to do for them. They didn't have an agenda.
They got to a point where they would just disagree with each other for fun.
Any kind of creative decision making meeting was just kind of ludicrous.
So I was able to do what I wanted to do.
That isn't graphic design. It's not how graphic design
normally happens. More often than not I'm at a thing like this (conference),
and a few people will come to me afterwards and say, 'I became a graphic
designer because of your record covers.' I have to say (sheepishly), 'Sorry!'
Audience: How did you start working for Factory Records?
PS: I went to college in Manchester, which is where
I grew up. The first few things I did for Factory - the first poster, actually
- happened in my final term at art college. Then it was the summer break,
and I was...I was scared to leave home. One of my older brothers moved,
so I got to live in his apartment, and I kind of put off trying to get a
job. I was able to deliver some things for my father for £20 a week
or something, so I had some cash. But I was just being kind of pathetic
and not braving the fact that I knew, to be a designer at any level., I
would have to leave Manchester and move to London. I was afraid of that.
I hung around in Manchester long enough to still be
there in Christmas, 1978, when Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus and I sat down
and decided to do a record. The Factory was a club, and some of the bands
that played there didn't have a record deal. Tony thought they deserved
one, and if they had a record, that would help them get a deal. So that
was the beginning of Factory Records. And I stayed (in Manchester) just
long enough to do that. Then one day in spring, my father turned up at my
flat at three in the afternoon, and I was still in bed. He was just furious,
and he told me that, if I didn't get a job by the end of the week, he would
get one for me. So I got on a train, went to London and got a job as an
assistant at a studio.
Before I left (Manchester), I did the first Joy Division
album. I didn't have any high hopes. When you do an album cover, you don't
usually get to hear the record until afterwards. The only thing I knew of
Joy Division was a couple of tracks on the first Factory release, which
was called The Factory Sampler. The Joy Division tracks were kind of okay,
but they were difficult to listen to. I remember that I took the artwork
for Unknown Pleasures around to their manager's house about a week before
I left Manchester. Rob (their manager) said, 'Oh, I've got a test pressing.
Do you want to hear it?' And I thought, 'Shit, can I handle 40 minutes of
Joy Division?' (Laughter.) But I'd just delivered the artwork, so I had
to pretend like I was interested. Anyway, I listened, and in about 10 or
15 seconds I knew that I'd done the cover for something very important.
The artwork was sitting on Rob's table, and I was thinking, 'Wow, this is
really spooky.' Because I knew that I'd done the artwork for something truly
great.
Up until that moment, I 'd always felt self-conscious,
embarrassed, and kind of stupid that I didn't have the discipline to go
and get a job and earn a living. That I was kind of hanging around. Of course,
in retrospect, if I'd been more brave and raring to go and had left Manchester
when I graduated from college, I actually would have missed the whole Factory
thing. So it's quite strange how things work out.
Then I got to London, and I had a job as an assistant
in a studio. And I couldn't do it! I was hopeless. I found out right there
and then that I couldn't go to work each day. After a couple of months of
turning up late every day and being embarrassed, I sat with a man named
Ian Barry, who ran the studio, and I said, 'I think I have to go.' And he
said, 'Well, what are you going to do?' And I said, 'I think I'm going to
go back to Manchester and work with my dad.' He said, 'No, don't do that.
Peter, your problem is that you don't like having a job.' I said, 'I know!'
(Laughs.) 'What's the solution?' He said, 'You need to be freelance.' Because
I didn't mind working once I got there. It was just that it was difficult
getting me there. He said, 'Look, you can do it here. If you make any money,
you can pay rent for your desk.' So I thank Ian Barry for the biggest favor
of anyone in my career. I remember getting lunch with him, and I had this
amazing feeling afterwards, because I knew I could go out. I could look
at things, and I could go to magazine shops, and I could go to clothes shops,
and I could walk in the park... I was kind of free!
And I started to work really hard. From that moment
on I never stopped. I actually work all the time. I don't go on holiday.
But I don't work very well if I have to sit at this particular desk between
these particular hours. I just don't do it very well. It suited me to go
out and find my own sense of responsibility, find my own way in what inspired
me and and made me want to do something.
In the music business, failure is almost written into
the brief. Record companies just want it done. They will accept almost anything.
They don't really care what it is, just that it's done (with) words, credits,
copyright and pictures on the front. That's it. I knew, as a twenty-something
year old, that if I did it to the standards that they would accept, I wouldn't
go anywhere beyond the music industry, and when I was about 30 or 35 I would
be past my 'sell by' date and would be thrown out along with all the other
sad art directors from record companies. You don't want your dad doing your
record cover! Fuck that! (Laughs.)
So the standard of the work mattered to me. I saw it
as the only way out. The only way to somewhere besides the music business
was through some kind of quality. So we'd work all night at least once a
week. Once we did three days and two nights for a tour book for OMD. I saw
it the other day - it's this little book - and I thought, 'Fucking hell,
we stayed up for two nights to do that?' But that's how it is...
Audience: Could you talk about your relationship with
Nick Knight?
PS: Nick and I have been friends since '86. Nick came
to see me and he wanted a business card and a poster of one of his pictures.
Nick always wants the best of anything - the best prints, the best car,
the best camera, the best studio. He doesn't want the best in a snobbish
way, he just wants to feel that he's giving himself the best chance with
something. Well, we did a nice dark blue card for him, with some ranged
left-hand sans serif type. He said 'Thank you, but it's really boring. I
came to you because you do these exciting record covers.' He was really
quite upset - Nick gets quite irritable when he doesn't get the service
that he wants. So he left, and my assistant said, 'Fine we'll give him what
he wants!' He designed this really over-the-top business card that looked
like a New Order cover. In fact, it looked like Ceremony. It had a shield
with 'NK' on the shield and it had stripes and everything. (Laughter.) Nick
came back and he loved it! (Laughs.)
So that's how I met him. About a year or so afterwards
he did a shoot for iD magazine. As a result of that he got taken on by a
man called Marc Ascoli, who was a fashion art director. During a shoot (for
Yohji Yamamoto's '86-87 Autumn/Winter men's catalogue) Nick asked Marc who
would be doing the graphics. Marc apparently said 'What is graphics?' What
used to happen is that Marc would do some photographs with the photographer,
take it to Tokyo to show Yohji, and the printers would come in and make
a catalogue. No graphic designer problems at all! Nick being Nick thought
this was a bit cavalier and leaving things too much to chance. As a result
of that, I was introduced to Marc, and Marc said, 'Okay, to keep Mr Knight
happy I take you to do the graphics.' That was the beginning of Nick and
Marc Ascoli and I working together. We did another ten catalogues for Yohji.
Show Studio came out of that relationship. We all kind
of wanted a platform for our own work. So the idea of having a site seemed
like a good idea. Foolishly, I thought that multimedia would be quick and
inexpensive. I learned really quickly that it isn't quick and it's very
expensive. Within about 12 months of Show Studio, I knew that you couldn't
do it. Well that's not true - to make it profitable or break even, we would
have to make it do things we didn't want to do. So I kind of drifted away
from it. I have to commend Nick for having stuck with it. Show Studio cost
Nick, I reckon, about £25,000 a month of his own money...Though he's
grossly over paid, as are the rest of the world's top fashion photographers.
(Laughter.) Well, they're not really overpaid. That's just careless for
me to say that. No, not careless...It's bitter for me to say that!
Copyright: Tokion, Knee High Media U.S., Inc.
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