Hipertext by Júnia Lie

tomato : John Warwicker

tomato www.tomato.co.uk

Faculdade de Belas-Artes Universidade de Lisboa Design de Comunicação// 1º semestre Docente_Pedro Almeida Lisboa 2009

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tomato underworld Experimental Jetset

Katherine McCoy & Cranbrook Academy of Arts

EmigrĂŠ

tomato www.tomato.co.uk

How to be a graphic designer, without losing your soul

John Warwicker John Warwicker graduated from Camberwell School of Arts in London. During the 1980s he was briefly a member of the band Freuer (who later became Underworld); was part of design group da Gama; and was art director of A&M Records. After a slint as head of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;information design companyâ&#x20AC;? Vivid, Warwicker formed the creative collective Tomato with Steve Baker, Dirk Van Dooren, Simon Taylor, Graham Wood, Jason Kedgley, Micheal Horsham and Underworld members Richard Smith and Karl Hyde. Tomato works across film, branding, music, television, cinema, commercials, advertising, books, architecture and interactive media. They have exhibited internationally, and lecture and hold workshops widely. Clients include Sony, Nike, Levis, Coca-Cola and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2005, Warwicker will publish The Floating World: Ukiyo-e, the first monograph on his work. In it the documents his experiences in an authentic voice, mining the themes, ideas, histories and memories that have informed and influenced him over the past ten years.

www.tomato.co.uk

How to be a graphic designer, without losing your soul

Interview What prompted you to became a graphic designer? I don’t know whether I’ve ever thought of myself as a “grephic designer”. I do remember as a child being fascinated by my grandfather’s mathematical notebooks and the strange letterforms in it. I’m sure that’s where my love of typography started. And I do remember at the age of nine or ten designing my own newspaper in the weekly art classes in junior school. And like every teenager, music played a really important part in my cultural definition. Record sleeves were like flags of allegiance and in the early seventies they symbolized what “graphic design” was to most of us growing up at that time. At art school I had the “choice” between fine art and graphic design. My parents supported me throughout my education, which was quite hard for them. I was worried that I couldn’t earn enough money from “fine art”, at least in the initial stages, and I didn’t want to be a further burden on them. I thought that I would probably earn enough to play my way if I worked as a “graphic designer”. For me “graphic design” was a label someone else put on the work. Looking back, how do you view your design education? Were there things that you didn’t appreciate at the time, but whicc in retrospect have proved beneficial? Not really. My education at Camberwell School of Arts was comprehensive. I took the attitude, as did many of my peers, that art school was an opportunity to be fully embraced. We were very self-motivated and hungry for knowledge.

What were your ambitions at the start of your professional life? The same as they are now - to do something that I’m not expecting and that teaches me something about the world and my place in it. You were involved in music industry design early on in your career. Was this a good grounding for what came later? No. i’m afraid it confirmed my suspicions of any creative group that calls itself an “industry”. You are famous for being a designer who disregards the conventional boundaries of design. You make books, films, installations and interactive work. You write prose and you give talks and lectures. Can you talk about this?

What boundaries? It’s my life and I do what I’m interested in or intrigued by. If anyone else is interested, that’s good - maybe there will be a conversation. Tomato members are celebrated for mixing personal projects with commercial work. What does this give the individual?

Their individuality! What is the most important lesson you have learned as a graphic designer?

How to be a graphic designer, without losing your soul

That there’s no such thing as “graphic design”. Only lots of books on it and an assumption that it exists. And that the world likes to “commodify”. What advice would you give to a designer starting out today?

Find your own voice. And find out what motivates others. I read an interview in which you said: “Tell your clients when they are wrong. Because sometimes they are”. Is this good advice for a young designer? Shouldn’t they be doing what they are told? No. They should think about what is being proposed and see if they agree with it . And if they don’t agree, they should say so in a quiet and reasonable way. Ask “why?” of both yourself and the client. If you don’t, you won’t learn and neither will the client. What’s important is to built a portfolio that does not have to be qualified. It should speak for itself. I know this through bitter experience. In the 1980s I won awards and the “industry” liked my work. I gave a talk at St. Martins and this very large guy with a goatee and woolly hat approached me afterwards. He said that he really enjoyed what I said, but thought my work was “crap”. He was right. And that’s how I met Graham (Wood) who I later formed Tomato with. I made a mental note to throw away ten years of work, but it took me several years to completely let go. You have to pull yourself up every day and erase old habits. I’ve never been satisfied with any of the “commercial” work that I’ve ever done.

What is good about the young designers yousee, and what, if anything, is lacking? The good oens have energy. The not-so-good ones lack discipline, knowledge, selfcriticism and are too reliant on technology. But I think this is true for every designer, no matter what age.

tomato

tomato was founded in 1991 as a collective of artists, designers, musicians and writers.

each one of the creatives involved is essentially independent, choosing to work and collaborate with the wider group whenever appropriate. currently there are eight active members in the collective but many others have played important roles during the ongoing development of tomato. for the past seventeen years tomato has recorded successes with hosting

workshops, publishing, exhibiting, live performances

and public speaking as well as working with clients in the areas of

advertising, architecture, fashion, public installations, music, tv & film and graphic design.

the

future will...

tomato

“like much recent graphic design, condition of film — or if not tic and permeable synthesis of ing promos for rock stars at A& have projects on the showreel. It the last years as arguably the pographer working for british guardian, nike and mtv and a

“tomato recognise the existence of the categories, but they waste no time wondering where they fit. ´to categorise something is to put it in the box,´ says Wood, ´to build barriers, walls. process is about evolution and development. categories and process are anathema to each other” Design without boundaries, visual communication in transition, Rick Poynor

tomato

“we are all on journey” tomato´s work seems to aspire to the f i l m e x a c t l y, t h e n s o m e s t i l l m o re p l a s media. Warwicker cut his teeth directM r e c o r d s . Ta y l o r a n d Va n D o o r e n a l s o is Wood, though, who has emerged in most original and Zeitgeist-attuned tyadvertising, with commercial for the string of other moving-image projects” Design without boundaries, visual communication in transition, Rick Poynor

tomato

tomato is a system, tomato system, tomato isisaasystem, a structure structure aastructure and and and a framework fostering a variety framework fostering variety aaframework fostering aavariety of of of approaches to work; approaches towork; work; approaches to this work reflects thiswork workreflects reflects this and and and is formed by state the state formed bythe the isisformed by state of of of creative flux between its members creative fluxbetween between itsmembers members creative flux its and and and the outside world. theoutside outside world. the world.

tomato

the approaches within tomato are not about design in any traditional sense. instead, tomato makes work which may be adapted to peopleÂ´s differing needs and contexts. drawing from their own experiences and personal work, members of tomato each bring a singular sensibility to a variety of media including film, music, photography, print, sculpture, sound, typography and conceptual writing - and these varied creations and perspectives combine to extraordinary effect. see the series tomato projects process; a tomato project bareback; a tomato project

tomato

underworld tomato

. Karl Hyde . Rick Smith . John Warwicker underworld, since 1989

underworld & tomato

mmm...skyscraper, i love you by. Karl Hyde and John Warwicker

karl hyde is a founder member of both underworld and tomato. the publication of “mmm...skyscraper, i love you” coincided with the release of underworld´s first album “dubnobasswithmyheadman”. mmm...skyscraper, i love you is the work of karl hyde and john warwicker, members of creative group tomato. it formed part of the development process of the underworld album, dubnobasswithmyheadman. the album was released in england to universal acclaim in january 1994. the name called it the best british album since primial scream´s ´sreamadelica´. melody maker stated, “underworld are the future, the most important group since the stone roses”.

underworld tomato

in these days of endless band reformations, avalanches of reissues and shamelessly repetitious ‘creativity’, too many artists are willing to sign away their soul for a little extra time on the career clock. too many of them see artistic expression not as an end in itself, but as a shortcut to celebrity and are obsessed with their destination, rather than engaged by the journey. too few of them, frankly, are like Underworld. an incredible 27 years after their birth in Romford, Essex as a trio and 15 years after they pressed up their debut single (500 copies of the Balearic twofer, ‘Mother Earth’/‘The Hump’), Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are still enjoying the ride, grinning like kids as new vistas unfold before them. It’s been a long and exhilarating trip – and it’s not over yet.

underworld & tomato

“in Wood´s video for the Underworld dancetrack “Cowgirl” there is less information and higher degree of repetition, with the words on screen sometimes supplementing or contradicting what is said. a metallic voice signs ´everything, everything, everything...´

Design without boundaries, visual communication in transition, Rick Poynor.

Wood expands it with Wittgenstein´s ´the world is all that in the case. ´the voice signs ´ i´m invisible´. Wood amends it to ´ indivisible´ — as good description as any of this own method. cutting words and phrases to the beat and echoing, or not quite echoing, sensation. the effect is compelling”

underworld tomato

band

doing

arts 24

doing

underworld & tomato

images r (...)where graphic elements provide the interfece between the electronic world and the physical environment.

tomato experimental jetset as collective

Katherine McCoy & cranbrook academy of art. emigrĂŠ

tomato experimental jetset as collective

Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam graphic design unit founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. Focusing on printed matter and installation work and inspired by modernism and rock culture, Experimental Jetset has done work for clients such as the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum (SMCS), Purple Institute,Centre Pompidou, Colette, Dutch Post Group (TPG), RĂŠunion des MusĂŠes Nationaux (RMN), Le Cent Quatre (104), De Theatercompagnie and t-shirt label 2K/Gingham. Since being formed, Experimental Jetset has emerged as one of the most respected studios in Europe.

tomato experimental jetset as collective

http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/misc/about.html

so, what is this site about? We aren’t exactly sure ourselves. What we do know is that this isn’t a typical portfolio site, displaying case studies to attract potential clients. This site would sooner scare clients away than attract them. We see this site more as a collection of tiny ‘The Making Of...’ documentaries, or as one of these extra DVD features, where you can hear the director talking over his/her own movie. Information only intended for the small group of people really interested in our work. Who are these people? Mainly students sending us questionnaires, classes wanting to visit us in our studio, and people requesting specific information about specific projects. It has been our wish for quite some time to have all the background information written out, in an easy accessible format, so that we’d never have to repeat it again, sounding like a broken record-player. Added to that, we thought it also might be an interesting process, describing our own work. Whether you call it re-evaluation, post-rationalizing or simply navel-gazing, we feel we can gain some insight through it. We can easily imagine that some of you are quite allergic to this kind of outpouring. If you are, you should leave this site immediately, as it will be pure torture for you. As we already wrote, we intended this for a small group of people anyway; it’s an acquired taste. As for the specific way in which we show our work on this site (the whole “this is the given problem, and this is our solution” rhetoric), we’d like to mention that we were quite influenced by Bob Gill. As students at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam), we discovered in the library a dusty copy of ‘Forget All The Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design – including the ones in this book’. This book had an immediate impact on us. What impressed us most was its consistent use of the ‘problem/solution’ model. It’s a dialectical model that some might find outdated, rigid, one-dimensional, didactic, archaic. To us, the problem/solution model is most of all beautiful. Of course, it has a tragic side, as every solution only brings forth more problems; and besides, we all know there is no such thing as an objective solution, let alone one perfect solution. But it is exactly this inherent tragic dimension which makes this model so beautiful to us. (In a way, the ‘problem/solution’ model reminds us of a quote from Jorge Borges: “Nothing is built on stone. All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone”. We think this perfectly sums up our view on design in general: building on sand, as if it were stone).

e Katherine McCoy –, afirm

ta, liberal e progressista que onde gostavam de viver.

Katherine McCoy & cranbrook academy of art

“designers at cranbrook expressed this ´attitude´ in formal experiments (visual and verbal) that played with conventions of reading, and in projects that used theory as a direct source of content by collaging together quotations from various sources. Theory thus provided both an intellectual background for abstract expression and a subject for research” Design Writing Research - Writing on Graphic design, Ellen Lupton; Abbott Miller

Katherine McCoy was born in Decatur, Illinois, in 1945. She studied industrial design at Michigan State University before joining Unimark International in 1967. She went on to work at Chrysler Corporation and Omnigraphics Inc. In 1971, McCoy became co-chair, with her husband Mike McCoy, of the design department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which they continued to direct until 1995. By the 1980s, their sometimes controversial programme had established itself as one of the most innovative in American design education, producing a stream of graduates who have gone on to make their own mark in the profession.

mar a sua identificação com a herança moderna, socialdemocra-

e construiu o Estado holandês, com o qual se identificavam e Katherine McCoy & cranbrook academy of art

“The complexity I’m interested in is complexity of meaning. I’m not so much interested in the layers of form as the layers of meaning” Eye Magazine: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=47&fid?56

“If design is about life, why shouldn´t it have all the complexity, variety, contradiction, and sublimity of life?” Graphic design theory, readings from the field, Hellen Armstrong, com Elllen Lupton_pág 82

“The work of alumn shown here bears witness to their continuing grouth and the application of the experiment in the world” http://www.highgrounddesign.com/mccoy/kmccoy.htm

emigré

Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Licko

The first eight issues also incorpo caught the attention of designers magazine´s evolution.

“For me, like many others galvanised by graphic design during Emigre’s heyday, the magazine was the most consistently interesting design publication produced anywhere by anyone.” Rick Poynor http://www.emigre.com/EB.php?id=125

emigré

rated a dynamic aesthetic that and led to the next stage in the

“Emigre is now a priceless historical document that is valuable because it defines an epoch, propagates a process, and encourages alternatives.” Ellen Lupton http://www.emigre.com/EB.php?id=125

Emigre’s development from its early bitmap design days in the late 1980s through to the experimental layouts that defined the so called “Legibility Wars” of the late 1990s, to the critical design writing of the early 2000s

bibliografia LUPTON, Ellen e Abbott Miller (1996); Design Writing Research - Writing on Graphic design; London: Phaidon. POYNOR, Rick (2003) ; No More Rules ; Graphic Design and Postmodernism; London : Laurence King. POYNOR, Rick (1998) ; Design without boundaries: visual communication in transition; London: Booth - Cliborn. SHAUGHNESSY, Adrian (2005); How to be a graphic design, without losing your soul; London: Laurence King Publishing.

ReferĂŞncias online http://www.highgrounddesign.com/mccoy/kmccoy.htm. http://www.underworldlive.com/home http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=47&fid=56 www.tomato.co.uk http://www.phofa.net/blog/john/ http://www.cranbrookart.edu/index7.html http://www.ghtv.jp/video/ukpop003 http://www.inframe.tv/filmproject.aspx?id=15 http://training.sessions.edu/resources/interviews/interviews/john_warwicker.asp http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/misc/about.html http://www.aisleone.net/2008/intervista/intervista-experimental-jetset/ http://www.myspace.com/underworld http://www.emigre.com/EB.php?id=125

Design by Júnia Lie Typography // Frutiger Futura Helvetica Photography// Júnia Lie Tomato