Heroes & Heroines
Peter Saville was born in Manchester, England in 1955; he grew up in the affluent suburb of Hale and studied graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1975 to 1978. His friend and former schoolmate Malcolm Garrett joined soon after his first year had commenced and quickly began to exert an influence on his ideas and approach to the course. Already by his second year Garrett had wrangled his way to designing for the Manchester punk group the Buzzcocks. This fueled Saville's own ambitions and influenced by a stolen library copy of Herbert Spencer's Pioneers of Modern Typography, he found inspiration in the elegantly ordered aesthetic of Jan Tschichold, the German born book and type designer who was to become the chief propagandist for the New Typography.Tschichold initially favored sans serif typefaces and asymmetrical settings of type, but due to their later appropriation by fascist groups, he turned back to serif type and centered settings. Using Tschichold's style, Saville didn't differentiate between the two phases, a first sign of his laissez faire attitude to matters of orthodox design history.Saville's entry into the music scene stemmed from a meeting with Anthony Wilson, a journalist and Granada TV presenter. After hearing that Wilson intended to launch a new club night, anticipating he might require a designer, Saville approached him at a Pattie Smith gig at the Apollo in 1978. When they met later, instead of displaying examples of his own work, he showed pages from Tschichold's Die Neue Typographie (1927) and on that basis; Wilson commissioned the first Factory poster - Fac 1. Using an industrial warning sign he found on a door at Art College and a colour scheme derived from NCP (National Car Park's) signage. This poster was Saville's first Classical/Modernist work.In July 1978, Saville graduated from Manchester with a first class degree. He then undertook Factory's next major project, the sleeve for a Factory Sample. He became a founding partner in Factory Records, with Wilson, Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton, record producer Martin Hannet and actor Alan Erasmus. This release heralded an assault on the post-punk burgeoning music scene in Manchester. The unqualified autonomy he enjoyed while working for the new label, initiated a freedom from the overt constraints of marketing, which further allowed him to experiment in the very semiotics of visual communications.A compilation of unsigned acts, Fac 2 was accorded a numbering system that referenced sitionationism and seriality. Made from industrial heat-sealed polythene, it continued the industrial look of Fac 1, but reworked in black and silver. The 5000 pressings sold out, which enabled the first Factory album, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (1979) to be released. The striking cover, depicting a wave graph of a dying star against an inky black textured sleeve, was startling in its minimalism.After moving to London in 1979, he became art director of the Virgin offshoot Din Disc. Between 1978 and 1983, Saville created a body of work which furthered his refined take on Modernism, the work he did for Joy Division and their later incarnation New Order may have formed the crux, but additional work for everyone from Roxy Music to OMD highlighted his considerable talent.After the dissolution of Din Disc in 1982, Saville, along with his collaborators, the photographer Trevor Key and Brett Wickens (a Canadian design student), formed Peter Saville Associates (PSA). During these years, music industry clients were joined by institutions like the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, the Pompidou Center, Paris, and the French Ministry of Culture, as well as fashion clients such as Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Sitbon and Jill Sander.His use of historical appropriation in the early 80's paralleled a broader demarcation in the fine arts with the works of artists, such as Sherrie Levine, but Saville pushed these ideas the furthest in graphic design. The sleeve for New Order's Power Corruption and Lies for example, reproduces a detail of a Fantin-Latour painting, the only difference being the right edge of the cover, bears a colour check guide in the form of a printer's 4-colour registration code. This code is also allocated letters which spell the name of the group. Here Tschichold's theories of mechanical reproduction (designing for such processes), are collided with Walter Benjamin's (the delusions involved in such actions).Although Saville moved on from the more overt forms of postmodern appropriation, he was never shy to discuss his sources and influences, as well as what he regards as the 'gloriously parasitic elements of graphic design'. By 1990, due to the recent meltdown in the world financial markets, PSA couldn't sustain the studio and closed. Saville was invited by John McConnell to become a partner in Pentagram's London office. This involved heading a team made up of Wickens and most of PSA. His new salary meant he avoided bankruptcy; unfortunately he never fitted the more orthodox business constraints of working for a design practice like Pentagram, and failed to meet earning targets.Wickens and Saville decided to move on at the end of their probationary period in Feb 93. They joined Frankfurt Balkind's Los Angeles office as creative directors in 1993. Again it failed to materialize the way Saville hoped. The overt commercialisation of Hollywood, coupled with his antithetical way of working, created a schism that the joys of shopping (his clothes and furniture were impounded by US customs) failed to stem. This division also grew with Wickens, who decided to stay when Saville left in the summer of 94, their thirteen year partnership captured poignantly in the sleeve for 'A Means to an End' - an album compilation of Joy Division covers, the photograph shot from Saville's own house in LA.On his return to London in 1994, despite missing the dawn of Brit-art and Brit-pop, it wasn't long before he found his feet and became saturated in this new milieu. Reacquainted with his former assistant Howard Wakenfield, he began to work as a freelance for British and European clients, including London Records, and to review the Mandarina Duck (the Italian bag and luggage retailer) identity. He was even offered a place at Tomato, the new design firm at the heart of 'Brit-pop', though both he and Wakenfield, never felt comfortable at Tomato and left after 6 months.In 1995 he met Mike Meire, the co-founder of a young German advertising agency, Meire and Meire, who wanted a London base. Saville due to his unorthodox living arrangements since returning to England, had previously been shown an apartment in London, a run down Mayfair pad, decorated in 'seventies coke-dealer style'. Between them they contemplated a glamorous live/work space. Meire signed a three-year lease on Audley Court and Saville had the renowned interior architect Ben Kelly refurbish it. Hence 'The Apartment' was born; soon numerous lifestyle magazines were queuing up to feature the blue suede bedroom walls and louche leather sofas. Groups such as Suede and Pulp saw these images and were attracted to the vicarious representation they embodied. Young British artists also visited, which reawakened his ideas to produce art.He was paid a salary by Meire and Meire, which enabled him, like his time with Factory to spend as long as he needed on the work - good for Saville but in the end not so good for the finances of Meire and Meire. At the end of two and a half years, Meire regretfully pulled out. Saville spent the remainder of the lease working with Wakenfield and Paul Hetherington, on what he labeled 'Waste Paintings'. These works derive from filters used in the graphics software program Photoshop.While Saville, a self-confessed illiterate when it comes to computers, was drawn to the possibilities of the internet as a medium to distribute work; removing the need as he saw it, for a secondary agent to act as a conduit. So along with his long-term collaborator the photographer Nick Knight, they set up the web site SHOWstudio.com. Its purpose like many other dot.com ventures not entirely clear-cut. His work for the site remained marginal after it went online early in 2001, since then he has been working with a fluid team of independent designers and creative consultants, to do work for a client list that includes Alexander McQueen, E M I, Stella McCartney and Givenchy.In March 2004, he was appointed Creative Director for Manchester; he is to work closely with the city's marketing co-ordination unit to communicate in different guises its unique brand strategy.
