Ian Anderson and Nick Bax the creative brains of trend setting UK design studio The Designers Republic presented their work and gave lectures at Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts.
Sheffield based Designers Republic makes one of the leading design agencies of today. Made famous by their album cover designs, DR works include the total design for Warp Records and their artists, Nike, Moloko, Satoshie Tomiie, famous Drum&Bass Arena t-shirts or my personal favorite Funkstoerung website, covers and videos.
The guys themselves have the strong musical backgrounds playing (and managing) in punk and rock bands in 70's and serious DJing in 80's.
As guests of RADIO3 Sarajevo they played a set of they favorite tunes ranging from punk anthems through selected funk, hip-hop and old school beats. Supa surprise was The Beatles abstract electronica track 'Revolution no. 9' played as they said - 'To scare the last listeners off.'.
...didn't happen!
Wander how they got their name? Don't ask FM4 butler Mr. Smithers. Here's the truth...
First started by designing flyers for his band: Ian Anderson, the founder of DR drinking beer in RADIO3 studio
Chillin' in the sun with some Sarajevo designers
How did you come up with the name DR?
Around the time we started DR, Sheffield - the city where we live - was basically a socialist council - leftwing enough to scare the rightwing media in our country and their best for of attack was to try to take a piss out of what council is trying to achieve. They kind off dubbed Sheffield as Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, which is the county where Sheffield is. At the time as was managing a band called "person to person", doing flyers etc. also, I was pretty interested in Russian constructivism - at that point I wasn't a designer - I hadn't studied design - so it was purely just a passing interest. This influence kind of rubbed off some of ideas I had for the covers and because that looked slightly Russian someone in the band just said: "Oh, it's like The Designers Republic of South Yorkshire". Next the bend, because primarily they weren't any good, split up and I was still trying to be the greatest manager in the world and started a lot of designing basted on the work I did for them and another band. I was just using the name DR because I just couldn't mention my name because I was the manager of the band and the record company thought it was the conflict of interests.
When we decided to make the company official we worked out some of the names we wanted to use. The point was really the way that we felt was that we kind of declaring the independence from the London design scene - 'The Designers Republic' is the best name we could use. It started as a joke and ended up being a manifesto.
What have you been doing lately...?
We kind of got bored of going to that kind of clubs, listening to sort of WARP stuff - we hear it in the office every day and that what people expect us to listen to ... some time ago we decided to do something different and we found a heavy rock pub in Sheffield and got to be regulars there we used to go there and put stuff on the jukebox - all the kind of '70 rock records you not supposed to admit you like it... some times is good to just like brake out a little bit and actually enjoy yourself.
Ian Anderson with pro.ba wiseguys Tvico and Timur
The Designers Republic produced fantastic video for FUNKSTÖRUNG's track Grammy Winners feat. Triple H. After the experiences with the post production for the Aphex Twin and Pulp videos it is the first DR produced video - wicked!
Check it!
Sarajevo | 4.4.2001 | 19:23 
