Interview with Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic™
‘The Designers Republic is dead; Long live the Designers Republic,’ said Ian Anderson when his vanguard agency The Designers Republic™ (TDR™) went into voluntary insolvency. Hit with inescapable factors, after 23 years, they may have closed its doors, but it didn’t die. Anderson bought back the name and assets, and TDR™ was reborn, the natural order was restored, and was servicing the design world once again.
Relinquishing TDR™ would have been a travesty. TDR™ is one of the agencies you don’t forget. At one of its peaks, major clients included Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twins, Pulp, Jarvis Cocker, Nickelodeon, Coca Cola and Issey Miyake. Anderson and his team were producing work that redefined aesthetics, repackaging pop culture to generate a futuristic look that saw TDR™ become one of the most emulated agencies in the 90s.
While managing bands, Anderson also began to design their artwork, eventually designing the cover for the signed 80s Sheffield band Person To Person. Their single High Time was then widely released, the cover being an Anderson original. A few months later, on July 14 (Bastille Day) 1986, TDR™ was officially founded.
He’s the quick-witted, almost irreverent, always honest person (who won’t disappear up his own arsehole – read on) you’d hope to expect as Anderson gave fluoro a glimpse into his world of design, thinking, and not knowing as he prepares for his upcoming Australian tour.
fluoro. The Internet already presents your history really well. There is your amazing success. Remarkable work. You started in 1986, fresh out of college and your first job was a record cover. You became known for your bold design and work in the music industry… There were tribulations. A so-called comeback 8 or 9 years ago. You came back but you never really left, true? I imagine there might have been a brief pause but you quickly realised TDR™ was very much you.
Ian Anderson. The Designers Republic™ was declared on Bastille Day 1986. I wasn’t fresh out of college — I’d been in bands, promoting club nights, gigs, dj-ing etc before a band called Person To Person formed by ex-ABC musicians asked me to manage them. They liked the artwork I’d been doing for my events and happenings so suggested I did their artwork too (all in the name of retaining artistic control etc). I never studied design — essentially everything I’ve ever designed has been for a tangible reason. The business entity The Designers Republic Ltd went bust in February 2009.
The Designers Republic as a mission never stopped.
f. How important is design to you?
IA. It depends how you define design. Communication (by any means necessary), asking questions, provoking responses, creating dialogue, converting knowledge into understanding are all essential to me — like breathing in AND out. Arranging words, lines and shapes in two and three dimensions, capturing the spinning of the world in split second and making it move again are only of value, of interest, to me as means of channeling and amplifying the communication (targeted and/or ambient).
What people usually perceive to be graphic design is only important in the context of better communicating the solution to the problem. If design is reduced to surface I’d rather write something.
f. Why do you do what you do?
IA. Why does anyone do what they do? I’m lucky. I like what I do whatever it is that I do. Or I’m doing. I like to provoke dialogue, to kickstart conversations. Maybe I’m trying to make sense of it all. Putting stuff out there like a radar to see how it looks when it comes back at me. I need to know I have the option to connect, without the commitment to do so.
Partly I do what I do because people keep asking me to do it and I’ve grown accustomed to it. Maybe it’s easier than not doing it.
f. What do you spend most of your time doing today?
IA. Asking questions. Problem solving. Communicating solutions. Looking out the window. Listening to music. My head is seldom in the same space as my body. I drink too much coffee. Avoid sleep. Think. Think. Think. I’m an underused resource!
f. You’ve referred to your work in the past as ‘Brain Aided Design’. Starting on paper…? Is that your interpretation?
IA. I think. I can visualise in my head better than I can draw. Brain Aided Design is science first. Solving the problem is about logic. Communicating the solution is creative. Putting it down on paper is the beginning of the end.
f. It has been publicised that you have an anti-establishment stance that remains strong in what you do today. Is that true?
IA. I’ve never said I’m anti-establishment. We’re born, we’re lied to and we die. That’s life. The world is run by those with money and power and influence for those with money and power and influence. They can have it … There are more important things. The best things in life aren’t things … We need to make sure those things aren’t crushed. Meanwhile, just realising it’s a game means we win. How’s that for some deep shit!!
f. Is there a standout moment throughout your career that has defined you as a designer and more importantly as a person?
IA. My kids. They gave me a reason not to disappear up my own arsehole.
f. How has life generally influenced your work and your path?
IA. We are all the marks we make and the where and the why… and sometimes, for creatives, the how.
I never felt like an outsider but I’m more comfortable on the edge, on the outside looking in. I was a working-class boy in a very middle class school. I was a young socialist among the Stepford wives and Midwich cuckoos of consumer belt sweet suburbia. I never felt at home with Mr clean, so I became a southerner in The North with little in common, culturally, with the people I aspired to align myself with. I liked the contradictions.
My parents were very different from each other, and ultimately, because they did so much for me, different from me. As you can tell, I’m an only child! I don’t think any of this makes me that different from anyone else. People ask if I’m influenced by living in Sheffield for nearly 40 years. Of course I am — but then I would equally be a product of wherever I lived and whatever I experienced.
f. What’s next after the Australian tour?
IA. Returning ‘Up Over’ to some headspace. You ask that question like I’ve got the faintest idea what’s happening in the future! We’ve got some great clients now that I love working with and some cool projects kicking off globally… so more travel I guess. More of everything … never stop.
Ian Anderson will be touring Australia from Thursday 9 – Thursday 16 March 2017 to talk about The A-Z of TDR™ (30 Years / 26 Letters / 90 Minutes). Visit AGDA for more information and tickets.
Interview: Nancy Bugeja, Editor, fluoro.
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