He started in 1986 with an album cover for Age Of Chance - Kiss.
A is for Age of Chance / Architecture / Aphex Twin / Aim Low + Miss.
Aim Low + Miss was a project or label that the Designers Republic would use for their own work that wasn't part of a client project, Anderson went on to say that you sucess should be on your terms and not somebody elses.
B is for The Peoples Bureau for Consumer Information
The Peoples Bureau for Consumer Design was the Designers Repubic's shop through which they mainly sold infographics as well as other products and was called the People Bureau for consumer information because he is/was interested in why we do what we do such as consumerism and religion etc
Design is problem solving, and communicating the solution of problems, and to do that you need to understand your audience.
Anderson and the designers republic would often watch trends and how they would go and which would be strong.
C is for Coca-Cola
In 2004 the music industry was going down the pan with the boom of iTunes and all that.
One day Coca-Cola called and asked the Des Rep to help them as part of the M5 project, and wanted to reconnect with their cultural past from the 60's & 70's because in the 80's they had turned to a more commercial approach and lost some brand equity.
D is for Department stores around cathedrals / destroy minimalism / Dicks out now
You won't always like what becomes succesful, so you should just enjoy the process.
Inspiration can come from anyway, Dicks Out Now came from a poster idea for Dix (the French for 10) but a friend in a pub read it aloud as Dicks and it stuck.
E is for Echo City
Take on projects that they think can make a difference, like Echo City, which was part of the British contingent at the Venice Biennale for Architecture, which documented an idea from WW2 to build a second city north of Sheffield that would act as a distraction to the German Air Force and confuse them and hopefully save the towns Steelworks.
F is for Flesh / Freehand / Funk Strung
Regardless of what uni tells you, can never learn enough about Type and typography
G is for Ginta Gallery / Gulbenkian Foundation / The Guardian
There is always a bigger picture, and this might not always be clear.
H is for Hey Rube!
I is for "is this doable?" / Izzy Miaki
Always push yourself and ask if its doable? In the early days of computerized design, nobody really knew what you could.
J is for Jarvis Cocker
K is for "Kill Your Self"
Project which aimed at taking some of the vanity and egocentricity of the world, which featured the words printed in reverse so that they were on legible in the reflection of a mirror.
L is for LFO / Less is Less
"Less is less, more is more, anyone who tells you different is wrong"
M is for Moloko / Moshi Moshi Sushi / Marketting
As part of the video for Moloko (which is Milk in Clockwork Orange) Anderson pushed a shoot out to Switzerland (after the label were reluctant, used the line "well if you don't have that much faith in the band" with the band in the room the label couldnt say no") and wanted to photoshop a cow to Purple and White like Milka chocolate.
Moshi Moshi sushi, a sushi restaurant in London got floor to ceiling stickers of the tokyo skyline.
The best marketing or business model will always win over a better product with less good marketing or business models, such as Betamax vs VHS
Produced a sketch to show Japanese clients where Sheffield was, and drew a line showing where everything was considered the north and everything below it like shandy. This was later adapted for an exhibition about how glamorous it is up north with everything above the shandy line being covered in sequins and shiny stuff.
O is for Oversteps
Value options over having a favourite.
P is for Park Hill
Why do we try to emulate the precision of computers, when the mistakes that we make is what makes us human.
Q is for Qube
R is for Return power shift control
The Designers Republic wasnt set up to be this massive agency, he only wanted it to be a small company and so when the company went bankrupt he used the name return power shift control for his business until the court cleared him to use the name Designers Republic again.
S is for Shop 33 / Sissy
Shop 33 was a shop in Japan which sold some DesRep gear.
Sissy was the studio's in game representation in the game wipeout because the team did some work for it, building some real world brand equity for each of the teams in the game.
T is for Telia
U is for Up Over Down Under
Took an exhibition from Japan to Australia, and used the down under to alter all the promo so it was upside down
V is for Vampire Man
W is for Warp Records / Wipeout / Work Buy Consume Die
Warp Records wanted a logo that was futuristic, but given that it was designed in the 80's it was a challenge to design something that would look futuristic even in the future.
Wipeout is a futuristic racing game for Playstation. Wipeout was the best client to work with as their brief was "change the way computer games look forever" and they did. They used the limits of the cutting edge software at the time (Wipeout was released on PSOne) to develop some real world community aspects for each of the teams within the game, this created a following/community for the game that nobody had ever seen before, as well as creating a better experience both in and out of the game.
Work buy consume die, was a more long term project which came from an exhibition called Customized Terror. This was all about the point where one thing becomes another, there has to be a point where this thing is neither what it was or what its becoming. DesRep used this to subvert the politics of vegetarianism and sexism etc etc. WBCD was based around the consumer culture that was/is prevalent in today's society.
X is for Richard X x Liberty X
Richard X and Liberty X were on the same label, so the label thought it was a great idea to get the two to collaborate because they both used X in their stage names.
Y is for Yes No (in Japanese)
Designers Republic is too hard for Japense people to say so from a branding viewpoint they changed their name to something and the Japanese glyph for this name literally meant Yes No.
Z is for 28 Zermat Road
Home of Ian Anderson, used in an exhibition about the Designers Republic.
Responses from the Q&A;
-He's not easily influenced by others, as he's not that interested in what they do
-Everything is an influence, because we can't always notice or control this, but you can control what is an inspiration/what inspires you
-There is no hierachy of influence/inspiration
-Push what you can get away with
-There is a difference between inspiration and influence.
