Why intelligent designers are gods

[imomus]

Momus: Sharp-eyed observers of Saturday's pictures will have seen the dead giveaway: instead of a copy of the Torah, this apparent member of the Haredim was carrying a sacred illuminated book called The Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design. While the Torah concerns speculation on the design of the Earth, humans, animals and so on, the book I was carrying is somewhat more down-to-earth, factual and specific; it documents the workspaces and page layouts of influential Japanese magazine designers.

Strawman Cynic: That's a pretty effete religion to have. But I guess if God is an "intelligent designer", then all intelligent designers are gods of a sort.



Momus: Quite, Strawman Cynic. Creative activity makes small gods of those who do it well. I'm always happy to see creatives celebrated, especially the hidden ones. Outside of Japan, people who lay out magazines are rarely shown, and their workspaces are hard to visit unless you're in the industry yourself. I used to date someone who laid out magazines in London in the 80s, and got to visit magazines like Smash Hits, TV Hits and MacUser quite a bit as a result. But I must say the design environments shown in Pie Books' tributes to the Japanese art director -- Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design and CAP Magazine Designers' Collective -- are a lot nicer than the ones I remember in 1980s London. Thanks to the "creator's space" convention, design otakus can trainspot exactly what computer their favourite art director uses, and what kind of trees are framed in the view from the design office window. You even get to see the art directors in their working environment. It's pretty superlegitimate to want to see people immersed in their work. And documentation of people at work is the kind of thing that makes people into the whole relational aesthetics thing cream. What's more, the Japanese art directors don't just look more satisfied than their English counterparts, they look more refined and distinguished. Look at Yuji Kimura, for instance, who lays out Esquire. De la classe, quoi!



Strawman Cynic: Pie Books, eh? Pretty good name for a purveyor of stuff to put on your coffee table. You can eat these pies with a cup of coffee. But can consumption itself be consumed?

Momus: There's a bit of a paradox here. I'm rather contemptuous of consumption for its own sake, or design that's just there to stimulate more pointless consumption. But I change my attitude when two things happen -- when you get meta (in other words, pull back and look at the creative processes behind consumption, the sweat behind the sheen) and when you get retro. For instance, I love browsing through the old magazines at Dorama in Shimokitazawa more than the new magazines on the rack in your average kombini.

Strawman Cynic: That seems a bit perverse. Aren't magazines ephemeral celebrations of the now?

Momus: They are indeed. But there's nothing better than browsing through old magazines to capture what the past of a consumer society really felt like. Or to experience a delicious alienation from consumer society. You know that feeling you get when you see ridiculous "Space Age" styles, and suddenly the whole thing falls into place -- you see not just the fragile fiction underpinning 1968, but also the fragile fiction underpinning 2007. The same thing happens when you look at magazines from another country. Everything gets relativized, a certain vulnerability emerges. Imagine watching people sleep, and seeing their foolish dreams in bubbles above their heads.



Strawman Cynic: So you pity the poor consumer, do you? That sounds very lofty. Aren't you one too?

Momus: Of course I am. I'm also a producer. I produced a lot of cheap trash, plastic consumer products, during the Shibuya-kei period (Heisei 6 - 10). Those products were marked by exactly the kind of enchanted alienation I'm trying to describe here: they were meta and retro. They dabbled in old styles, and foreign styles. They turned old consuming into new producing (in other words, they sampled and recycled) and they turned projection (glamour) into production. And, you know, maybe that's why there was such a crossover between magazine culture and Shibuya-kei. Mitsuo Shindo, musical director of Hi-Posi, was also the art director at Contemporary Production. Konishi from Pizzicato 5 described himself in interviews as an "art director", and I think he really was that. P5 was a magazine project, a tribute to magazines and advertisements, especially 1960s ones. Shoichi Kajino, who was my A&R at Nippon Columbia, ended up designing fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin!

Strawman Cynic: Gadfly!

Momus: Gadfly and godhead!