James Kendall: It seems to me good design is about finding a balance between practicality and art.
Matt Barker: I don’t think art comes into it, to be honest. You could say that if you make visual art you need a visual sense, or a certain idea of what’s pleasing to the eye. But I don’t think you can say something that looks nice is art. I think design distinguishes itself from visual art because it’s about communication. It could be about communicating a concept, but it’s not about investigating it, which is the art domain.
JK: You say that design and art are very different things but people look at design in the same way they look at art. Design has to have a purpose, but people often look at it in a purely visual way.
MB: But I don’t think people look at art in a purely visual way. Even the most lay, chocolate box art lover is thinking about the artist. But I don’t think that people look at design and think of the designer. That’s an important distinction.
JK: In some ways design is a purer medium then. It’s got less baggage.
MB: Yes, for better or for worse I think that’s true. Designers for the most part are anonymous. For example who designed the Campbell’s Soup can? We all know who painted it – Andy Warhol, who made it this iconic thing – but who designed it? I don’t know. The essence of the design is acknowledged almost universally as a design classic, but no one knows who did it.
JK: So when you’re making your t-shirts for Generic, is that art or design? You could say that the t-shirt is just another type of canvas.
MB: This is different. Because I trained as an artist I approach that more in the way that I would a piece art than I would a design. But in terms of reception, it’s probably design. I would like to think that the two meet somewhere – between what I’m doing and what the wearer and the viewer are doing. I don’t think it matters that it’s being seen as design by the viewer and being seen as art by me. I have to think about it as design too, because someone has got to wear it.
JK: When we brought you in to help with the design of SOURCE, what did you think was the most important thing to communicate? What were your aims?
MB: I wanted it to have a bit of pizzazz, a bit of sparkle – something that looks very neat but has a bit of… ‘SOURCE punch’, I think you called it.
JK: Magazine design is to a degree giving the words a visual sense. For example Q is really quite dull in terms of what they write about and also the way it looks. Whereas at the opposite end of that scale is…
MB: Super Super!
JK: That’s a perfect example of the design reflecting the concept.
MB: This goes back to what we were talking about – design has to fit a subject. Art doesn’t necessarily have to but design has to be the body for the brain of the publication.
JK: I think that the design will influence the magazine. Editorially we’ll react to the look of it.
