As the project with Ailis is reaching its conclusion (http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2010events/1155-dream-machine) and Tenneson & Dale are working away on our new piece, I recently decided it’s time to set the next collaboration in motion. Because art projects always take longer than you can predict (that’s not a criticism – I love that they’re not bound by timescales and deadlines in the same way as the rest of the stifling world of work), I always try to set up the next project before the previous one has ended. I enjoy the variety and the way that ideas from one project unexpectedly morph into starting points for the next.
The focus of my work with Ailis has been maps, which has, in turn, led me to consider the shape of our landscape as it was 30 plus years ago and how it has changed. This led me to ask Sarah Simpkin if she would like to collaborate on a project with me. Sarah is a writer at Foster & Partners, the London-based architects. Unlike other collaborations, I’ve actually come to this one with a bit of an idea in my mind of where I would like it go, that is to say I’ve thought of a way we could combine her architectural writing and my visuals. I am really happy that Sarah has agreed it as a starting point… who knows what we will end up with.
I have only worked with one writer previously: Matthew Welton, the poet. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=815 He contacted me after seeing my work at a Rogue Studios open weekend. He was shortly to have a new collection of poems published and he had had a fantastic idea for the cover. He had a title for his new collection that was 101 words long – a lovely stand-alone piece of writing in itself. Because Matthew had seen examples of my typesetting at Rogue (a skill learned years ago on pre-press night shift at Bristol Evening Post and Press… still thankful to everyone there for their patience with me), he asked me if I would like to have a go at his book cover. It has always been a dream of mine to do this, so I said yes immediately.
Because the title was so long, the words themselves had to be the focus of the design. I came up with 10 different designs as an initial starting point. Matthew chose the two he thought worked best and from this point on, there was a process of discussion over the colour, styling and mood of the work between Matthew, myself and the publisher. I have included examples of the initial design and follow-ups here so you can see how the process unfolded. There were times when I found this to-ing and fro-ing difficult, as we had opposing points of view about what the cover should be because we were each coming at it from different angles. Matthew, obviously, wanted the words to be the priority; I was focussed on the overall look and and the publisher was most concerned about sales and, for want of a better word, pickupability! I think we ended up with a reasonable compromise – the most important thing had to be that Matthew was happy; after all, it was his book showcasing his writing on the cover.
