Peter Saville continues to be a huge influence on designers and his minimalistic iconic covers for Factory records in the ‘70s and ‘80’s are a particular favourite in the studio so it was with some anticipation that we all went to hear him speak at the D&AD lecture. Adrian Shaunghnessy was interviewing him and my heart sank a bit when he said that ‘Peter Saville’s greatest work is perhaps Peter Saville’ and that he was going to find out about ‘the man and the myth’ rather than to delve into the work.
As I feared, Saville rambled through somewhat random slides, thoughts and anecdotes rather than focussing on process but it was an entertaining evening. Choice nuggets include:
The first two Joy Division album covers were, apparently, largely a result of ‘luck’:
Unknown Pleasures: The band gave him the wave diagram and told him they wanted it in white on the cover; He left it the same size and photographed it in negative using a PMT camera. That was then the cover. He “didn’t know where to put the type or how to specify colour” so he didn’t do either.
Closer: The band asked him what he was interested in at the time and he showed them a book of Bernard Pierre Wolff photographs - one of which they thought would do fine for the album cover.
Richard Hamilton’s toaster seemed to symbolise what Saville was trying to do: a convergence of art, photography, design, typography and contemporary culture.“30 year-olds should not design record covers” ... “it’s something I grew out of”… “obsessing over type etc is something teenage boys do – it’s hobbyist”. I wasn’t really convinced by this line of argument and wondered if he was just fed up of talking about his early work.
Damien Hirst’s recent sale at Sotheby's was ‘utter crap’ “as if Selfridges had bought the rights to the Hirst brand and got a load of reasonably competent designers to produce a pile of tat”. Saville emphasised that he was just talking about this collection – not Hirst’s earlier work – that he quite liked.
