Notable work includes the animated on-board safety film for Virgin Airlines, a collection of Hawaiian shirts, a range of watches for Swatch, a BDA International Gold Award winning brochure for MTV Europe’s Music Awards penned by Alan Moore, and numerous comic book logos for mainstream comic publishers DC Comics and Marvel. He releases his font designs through his own label, Device. Recent publications include CULTURE: Ideas can be Dangerous, Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s, and Yesterday’s Tomorrows, a collection of his comic work, which was recently launched at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and is now available in paperback in the US. (Photo © G. Kassner)
1. Which work are you particularly proud of? Which work best represents your style or approach?
At any point in time, the work I’m most proud of tends to be something I’ve done recently. I then go through a self-critical period of seeing all the things in it that I could have done better, generally when I get the printed copy in my hands and it’s too late to change anything. Only after a few years, with a certain distance, is it possible to look at it afresh, and see whether, on balance, it worked or not.
Recent work I’m most proud of:
- CULTURE: Ideas can be Dangerous, which I wrote and designed.
- The Ultravox sleeve for Moments in Eden
- My Batman and Robin logo
2. The theme of this year’s TYPO London is »Social«. Do you consider design to be a social discipline? Which design project do you consider to be particularly socially relevant?
»CULTURE: Ideas can be Dangerous« is very much about the processes underlying design and communication in general, and how it in turn affects the social culture. The book doesn’t so much promote a certain social cause as try and explain how, as creative people, designers influence culture in general – as all creatives do to a greater or lesser extent. »Life imitates art far more than art imitates life«. Wilde.
3. A conference like TYPO London is in itself an obvious example for a social event: what are you especially looking forward to?
The social side – catching up with friends and acquaintances. And, of course, seeing others’ presentations …
Rian Hughes
4. Required reading/watching: What are currently your favorite interesting/beautiful publications, exhibitions, books, movies and/or websites?
I was greatly anticipating Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which turned out to be a lovely looking but poorly written curate’s egg. Scott never disappoints visually, especially here, where some of H. R. Giger’s unused designed from the original Alien finally got a look -in, but the dialogue… brrr.
Being that I’m very interested in playing with structure – as many designers are, it’s probably a designer’s obsession – I’m looking forward to the film version of David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, which, as a novel, impressed me no end. I’ve no idea how they’re going to cram all that happens in that book into a movie. Cloud Atlas was similar in many ways to Alan Moore’s ‘Voice of the Fire’; a collection of tales that span centuries (millennia in Moore’s novel) connected by threads that only become apparent as the big picture emerges.
I’m collecting vintage paperbacks with covers by the master of exotic sleaze, Reginald Heade. This has fed into my own burlesque book project, ‘Soho Dives, Soho Divas’, which should be published in November.
