Designer pain

[imomus]

Graphic Masochism is my latest piece for Voice: American Institute of Graphic Arts Journal. It seems to be provoking a few comments, which is more than the last one did. If you find the theme (more to do with things like ambivalence, negotiation and collaboration than actual sexual masochism) interesting you might want to read Metaphysical Masochism of the Capitalist Creative, the 2000 essay where I first broached this theme. Earlier this year I re-wrote that original essay for Amsterdam-based design magazine Dot Dot Dot. Issue 8 will appear shortly; you can check out the contents here. (I'm looking forward to reading 'The English Breakfast as a Modular System'!)

We decided to illustrate the AIGA Voice piece with the sleeve for Etienne de Crecy's Superdiscount album (1996), designed by H5 (Antoine Bardou-Jacquet and Ludovic Houplain). Which is funny, because I've just turned in a 1000 word piece for the November issue of Index magazine casting Paris musicians like o.lamm and Hypo as dragon-slaying knights -- the dragons being such 90s figures as Mirwais, Air, Phoenix, Cassius and... Etienne de Crecy.

Comments

Messy Essay

[(Anonymous)]

Very thought provoking piece. Power is very much bound up in the design process. Design is often a very sophisticated process of getting one's own way. However the commercial dictates tend to temper this ( you described quite this quite correctly as a form of fetishism, with advertising being about the details that demand a rigorous, exhausting regime to produce something that seems slick and effortless; sounds almost Japanese).
After the initial highs of brainstorming a design and 'winning' a pitch the actual result often is a disappointment. This is the 'masochism' where one enters a project with high ideals, but knows they will ultimately be dashed by the deadline, the committee and the client demands. Yet this is the tightrope that must be walked or one should choose the art gallery. I think it is this conundrum that makes design an interesting medium; essentially design is a specific solution to a problem.. Now whether it is good design is a matter of taste.

I feel that writing from your 'overview' perspective is the best thing you can do. Very few people can actually comment on the practice and methodology with such a unique approach. So don't worry about being broad, although your dialog with Mr Chantry shows you have a firm grasp of specifics. His work is very much genre generic and I am sure he has little european soul searching, when his work is done. Some meme splicing would make it a lot more interesting.

I think there are many parallels with design and pop music as the sensibility can often be the same for the musician and designer (which is why the piece rings true). Your work like design is often parody, with multi-referential levels and kaleidoscopic play with styles. You often work with the commercial and subvert it like good design often does and with the same ambivalence. Your recent work has less of this quality as you move more to the experimental, or un-pop. Do you think you have a more masochistic tendency these days as you don't make shiny pop with 'drop shadows' ? You don't seem so concerned with commercial success or pandering to your audience or are you actually ambivalent about this ? This is not a criticism more a line of inquiry, as in designing music ( sound design is the trendy label ad agencies use now) one is encountering the same problems. Be it a song or ad; it's still a product .

Design often has to pander to both the cutting edge and the status quo. The "shock of the new' approach of modern leftfield design is normally a fashion-transient phenomenon and rarely far reaching. The 'experimental is now the conventional' Mark E Smith quote is an apt way to describe the cyclical nature of design trends. It is funny seeing Neville Brody Constructivist type faces very much bound up with The Face magazine being used as the logo for a dental practice.

"Irony is a form of sincerity now" is very much the adman's motto these days. The kind of Lance Packard thinking has been recently altered with the more advertising being non- metaphysical and instead earthly, with ads more likely to eschew product virtues for branding. Often this is an aligning of the brand values with the woes of earthly consumers in the form of empathy; the trials and tribulations of modern life that the product seeks to attach itself to become part of it's brand mystique. I'd be very interested to hear your commentary on this kind of 'brand values vs product aspirations' subject matter .

A slightly portentous Richard G

Re: Messy Essay

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Great post, Richard, thank you.

I tried to convey in the piece something that's been my experience with pop music, namely that the compromises one makes with 'rigid givens' -- by which I mean the format, the formula, the client, the record label, the press, the radio, the brief, all the things that define and constrain one's notional free play -- can also be a source of strength and originality. And you're right to say that in my own work, the 'rigid givens' have all dropped away, leaving me with a kind of empty freedom. Nevertheless, there are very valuable things in that empty place. For me, it's the place Nico was when she made 'Desertshore', or Robert Wyatt when he made 'Rock Bottom'. I'm quite happy to be there. Then again, as soon as I get there, a perverse pop demon rises in me. I become the designer I describe in the article in the section 'You used your three wishes for that?' In other words, I make more commercial work than my circumstances really require, just because commercial work can be exciting, because of rather than despite its limitations.

I don't know much about branding, but it sounds like you could write a killer essay on that yourself!

Re: Messy Essay

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the compliment, regarding my garbled response to your excellent and stimulating writing.

Your honesty here, is at times astonishing. The freedoms afforded by your current work may seem a little empty, but I think they are essential for you to evolve and find new things that make you tick. Like cyclical design trends I am sure you will return to subverting pop idioms like you did prior to 2003. The pop demon within in you will always want to comment and combat with the memes of pop music, although that world is a little stagnant and fragmented right now. Seeing that you created a few of the trends that are now in the mainstream, an experimental sabbatical is imperative . However we still need a transgressive Momus with his mastery of seductive melody, and lyrical perversity to keep us on our toes, and also to break a few now and again.

On that other theme, I definitely think there is a Momus brand and would be curious as to how it could be defined ? I think the whole brand thing is definitely a subject you could write about. In pop music terms most of the pop brands have become homogenised milk. "Got pop ? " (to paraphrase a recent milk campaign).

Richard G