After twenty-something years of running a studio, and inspiring a generation of graphic designers to confuse style with design, The Designers Republic have closed their doors.
IMHO their interactive work was weak (try using the warp records site), but then ‘web design’ wasn’t what they were known for, and they could get away with stupid flash nonsense because it looked nice. Their aesthetic remained consistently relevant for waaay longer than I expected.
[update – the warp site has been beautifully redesigned by remote-location.com]
I never saw meaning in their work, only fashion and clever printing techniques. This is probably because I never looked that closely.. perhaps they’re the best graphic designers the world has ever seen. To me it seemed that their work contained hardly any “design”, it was all aesthetics.
But you couldn’t call it art, because it all looked like a fluorescent ad for pepsi. How confusing. How very coming-to-grips-with-identifying-ones-self-as-a-consumer.
Anyhoo their super-stylish work Kicked Arse in terms of being cool (whatever that means), it was in the right time and the right place, and they surely owned their “movement”.
I spent hours with photoshop copying the people who were copying them.
So long, and thanks for all the seizures.
nofrillsart
I guess everything isn’t cool! That is a shame. I never recovered from when the poppies stopped making music, and i owned a pepsi influenced PWEI tee. And as for warp that grew to become my fav label.
I didn’t know that TDR had anything to do with them…so you learn something new every day. Cheers for that.
NFA
onetonshadow
This is quite wonderfully written, just the right about of exasperation mixed with accuracy and comedy.
Also I agree, so that helps.
TDR came to my attention at the end of the ‘90s when suddenly every advert for every ’ClubMediMix99’ compilation (and there seemed to be a lot) had bright green 45 degree angle arrows and dots on it, and I couldn’t work out why. Turns out they had started this trend.
The Warp website annoys the hell out of me, so I ignore it, which is a shame as I love the label. I have one or two quite nice 12" covers by them but not a patch on a lot of the LPs Warp have that were actually designed by the artists themselves.
And this is also on the money: “Their aesthetic remained consistently relevant for waaay longer than I expected.”
In my opinion there’s still too many graphic design books appearing on the shelves at Borders that are still borrowing from that era of misjudgement.
(I’ve a funny feeling AA as a whole company are the fabric equivalent of TDR, but I can’t say that out loud)
James Lillis
Wow! I am literally listening to Dos Dedos Mi Amigos right now as I’m reading this… how synchronicitous.