NOISE,
PINTS AND...GRAPHIC DESIGN: A TALK WITH PETER MAYBURY
by Albert Carles
When the plane was near enough to land so that I could start to see once more
the Irish landscape of green grass
and grey skies, I came to think that no doubt Ireland must be one of the few
countries in the world that has a
corporate image: the green colour, harp, four-leafed shamrock and Gaelic alphabet
are graphic elements you can
find anywhere in the country and which are rooted nicely into the natural Irish
landscape. I could not help but to
compare it with other countries and, indeed, the Irish case is unique. Here
in Catalonia, as anywhere else, we
have as well some identifying symbols and a bunch of visual elements that can
identify us, but in no way are
we close to the graphic Irish singularity. I don't in any far-fetched way believe
this to be either good or bad,
it is rather an idea that brought me to write it all down on a slip of paper
one of the themes to take up with
Peter Maybury on the next day in Dublin.
09-11-02 Mulligan's Pub, Dublin
It was roughly half past ten when, duly drenched, we got to Mulligan's Pub door
willing and ready to meet Peter
and Marie Pierre. I had already met them previously in Barcelona some months
before during their trip here
together with some GRRR members. So, once greetings were interchanged at Mulligan's
door, it came all back
to my mind about Irish visual identity: a typical Irish pub with classic icons
(partly provided by Guinness) and
references to honoured famous customers of the joint like James Joyce were showing
the best-known Ireland.
However, even if the surroundings were unbeatable, it was plainly obvious that
an interview there would not be
possible. The fact that it was a Saturday evening and that the Irish Rugby Team
had won the Australians after
over 20 years of not doing so, had really packed up the pub with 50,000 Irish
suppoerters dressed in 1001
different varieties of clothing bearing the "corporate" Irish colours.
Also they were full of Guinness beer and
the commotion was deafening. Miraculously a table was emptied just before us
and we sat there quickly while we
were commenting to shift from an interview to an informal talk where an article
could be written from.
The first pints materialised in front of us and I could not hold myself back
any longer and bluntly started on the
subject that had kept me busy so far: the Irish graphic identity which I sensed
as an Irish tradition and the fact
that graphic design in the Western world was every day getting more and more
uniform.Global and local design
I began by regretting that nowadays meeting an Irish, Mexican or South-African
designer did not mean to
discover any different ways to understand design or that at least it was regrettable
to notice that all local
characteristics were reduced to mostly folk-lore features and was not evident
in the everyday desing or even
in vanguard work. This was self-evidenced in Ireland with a clear graphic tradition
and I did not find it correct
that it was not reflected, or had been lost, by Irish designers in their working
methods. Peter Maybury quickly
retorted that there is almost no continuous tradition of graphics in ireland.
He mentioned how in the first place,
successive generations of invasion and oppression had greatly affected and restricted
the development of all
aspects of culture in Ireland. So particularly in visual culture there is no
continuity – the visual language owes
as much to imported cultures as it does to the Irish condition.
By admitting frankly his reasons (my ignorance did not give me any other way
out), I tried to generalise some
more and not limiting it to Ireland's specific case, and repeating my interest
for each place identity and feeling
sorry that globalisation was bringing us all to a stylistic and conceptual uniformity
of design. To make this clearer,
I mentioned the stylistic evolution of ,
GRRR or himself during the last 10 years on confirming that since
the beginning of the '90's the three examples: Californian, Catalan and Irish,
had undergone a similar transformation
by going from a line of aggresivity, noisy, break-all and close to the use of
new technologies to a line that was
clearer, cleaner, smarter and less ground-breaking, but had more to do with
a recovery of the past. Peter Maybury
once again disagreed with my views as he did not see that these styles were
so clearly to be compared in the
examples I had given and said that, even if it was so, this was something positive,
that the shift in approach
reflected a commonality in our experiences and interpretation of the world.
Even more, to my question about there
being in Dublin any type of designers collective comparable to GRRR, Peter shook
his head negatively showing that
by being in the same place does not imply you can find affinities with your
professional companions (no doubt this
is obvious). At this point in our talk, nobody pretended to convince the other.
This discrepancy was enriching and
produced a number of data to be considered later.
Immersed in the purest Irish tradition (my brother was doing his utmost to reach
the bartender to get another
round of pints), the longed-for ritual of his presenting me his works began.
Among them and related to the graphic
design stylistic globalisation theme, Peter showed me a very recent job (actually
I think not even the customer
had seen it yet), whereby it was visibly clear, in my opinion, this globalisation.
It was a couple of CD covers, one
for an and the other one for a traditional
music, both Irish, in which Peter had applied the
same graphic criteria, not to be bound to the need to create a collection aesthetics,
but perhaps to demonstrate
that the same language can be used to communicate entirely different aspects.
The two covers were modelled in
the same way, using the same colours and typographies and both presented a landscape
photo as a centre element.
The truth is that that this solution worked quite well. The image did not hurt
the eye (as one might imagine).
As a result, perhaps universal styles are possible and should not necessarily
be negative. The talk was left this
wide open as it had to. To solve the matter about graphic design style globalisation
in hardly an hour's time is not
feasible. It is possible though or even desirable that everyone meditates on
it and takes a position. I am still thinking
that western graphics should not forcibly be uniform. If globalisation is to
be a positive system, so be it, but only
as long as it permits us the access to the different modes of understanding
culture around the world and not because
just a new one is born. What was clear to me (if it was not so before) is that
the identiy of one place, in asmuch as
it refers to visual effects, should not only turn to the more folkloric features
of a culture. Precisely as just being
a Catalan does not mean we have to wear a "barretina" (round cloth
head-dress). It must be possible to be an Irishman
without being dressed all in green with a shamrock tatooed on your brow.
Social responsibility
Although at Mulligan's they say their Guinness beer is
specially well "poured" now I opted for a Smithwicks beer,
toasted rather like a Lager that I have seen in Dublin and that I find tastier
than a Kilkenny, Murphy's etc. Just to open
up a new subject with Peter Maybury: the designer social responsibility, recurrent
theme in our magazine, but also
always inconclusive. Peter opened his eyes widely.suppose he did not expect
me to bring out such a monster problem.
During the interview he had with
in 1998, there were a few moments when this point appeared, but they only
asked Peter what he would do in the hypothetic case that Nike, McDonald's or
Coca-Cola ordered him a job, despite the
fact that his answers one could deduce his positioning about it, I wanted to
learn a little more about his point of view.
To make it short, I asked him to tell me if he believed that the designer had
any kind of social responsability and, if so,
which one was it to be. He made an excellent brief analysis: "If we have
any type of social responsibility, this must
firstly be to make life more agreeable for people. As designers we have the
possibility to make a positive contribution
to life, – the pursuit of excellence –and in this we must try to do
things as well as we are humanly capable of, and in
accepting a job I try consider all of its implications."To this we both
agreed and only we left on the air the subject of
in which degree we can choose our clients or they are choosing us instead. This
would have been an interesting discussion,
bearing in mind that Peter Maybury is working basically for clients in Dublin
cultural circles, not just like we others
that creep around the sewers of private small or medium Companies, but it could
not be. Well, coming back to the subject
of the social responsability, I liked it very much to agree with Peter because
quite often when you talk about social
responsability the tendency is to connect it with working for NGOs and humanitarian
or selfless activivities. The true
social function within the everyday framework in each of the orders we have
and must face up.
I should like to underline that Peter's work pleased me extraordinarily because
it exemplifies this living style of making
life more comfortable and nice. It was about a number of giant posters meant
to be placed around high fences encircling a public-works construction site
in Dublin. Each of the posters showed, on the background image of a woods, the
hands
turning the pages of a book. In an urban project, even more so if it is a public
job, it is no doubt where more it is seen
that a designer's work is none other than to make much better the everyday's
life for everybody. But Peter's project
goes beyond the aesthetic sheer decoration. Peter in conjunction with Marie
Pierre Richard and De Paor Architects
wanted to give a serious consideration about the ,
that which surrounds something, that has no beginning and no
end. That is, the repetition, the non-linear reading etc. Some way to be on
the streets that, as in great art work, is rich
with different reading levels, satisfying not only the one who placidly looks
at a colourful decoration, but also the one
who getting more into the message is awakened to a handful of thoughts on the
ways tro communicate visually.
Now it was growing late and pub lights were blinking to suggest they were about
to close. It was time to finish.
Although those two meaty subjects had dominated the talk, they were not the
only ones. We also chatted on programming
and design, about the multiplication of "poachers", intruders in webdesign,
in Dublin, about the fascinating world of
clients and some other points that dissolved within the beer foam. All in all,
just on the way out and on feeling the
raindrops on my face, I mused that what mostly pushed me to write this article
was to reflect, as well as I could, how
it was to travel and meet a top designer in another country. The cultural differences
that one expects to find, the
connections between the image you get from a country and someone that has an
influence on this image. All of this and
more was something that looked more interesting to me than to repeat what Emigre
had perfectly done some years back.
A couple of days later I heard again a deafening noise and they were not the
after-effects of a late hang-over, but this
time it was the jet engines of an AerLingus plane, clear sign that a few seconds
after, I would again see the "corporate"
green carpet I had seen some days before. At the same time, I was perusing the
N3 book about the Irish Pavillion (Peter
was the designer with photos from Marie Pierre Richard and Tom De Paor among
others) where you can see how a
country combining both tradition and modernity is presenting itself to others.
Great ! What better image could there be
to emphasize this fantastic and enriching talk I had had with one of the designers
(I don't know whether global or local)
that are more interesting today and that better carries out the enterprise of
making life better and nicer for us all.