Primary Research | Email Responses

Two of the six people gave responses to the questions that were sent out. One came back from Amy West stating that she would email and answer questions when she had the time, and the other two came back from DR ME, and Eric Hu.

The email sent to DR ME was responded by Eddy, who answered the questions in a personal way, referring to his personal practice as part of DR ME. Here is the reply:

Hey Emma,

Good questions.

So, do you enjoy using imagery to convey irony or pastiche? and why. 

We always like to evoke a small smile (or a laugh if we've really nailed it) when people look at our work, obviously there will be some people that scowl and think it's in bad taste but that's you can't please everyone or at least we hope not.
We tend to find that using imagery is the fastest way of doing this, one of my favourite pieces is a single sleeve for Dutch Uncles song 'Face In', it was supposed to be released before their second album to gain a bit of attention but the PR company got fired before the campaign hit the press so the single never happened, which totally sucked as it would've been wicked. It's my graduation picture with the face cut out and replaced with an upside down mountain, we thought it'd be really funny for the photo to have a use further than just sitting on my parents windowsill and of course the removing of the face sat quite nicely with the name of the song.

Here it is in fact:

Also, are you influenced by any postmodern designers, such as Tibor Kalman and April Greiman who take a similar approach to you, where collage, bricolage and humour are traits of the work.

I think although we both love design we're more influenced by art, this probably sounds a bit flowery but without people like Richard Prince, Bridget Riley, Gerhard Richter, Sol Lewitt, Miro we wouldn't have created half of the work we've created, that being said Kalman's work on Remain in Light really made me want to make record sleeves (even if the majority of that sleeve is made by Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads). When we met James Victore he introduced us to the work of Henryk Tomaszewski who if you're not familiar is an amazing Polish poster designer, people like him and Roman Cieszlewicz really made us realise that breaking things was the best way to make things beautiful.

Last question, how does technology play a role in your design process?

It's a tool, I cannot think of a single project that we've started on the computer that's been a success, we think a project should start in the mind and grow from there, it will then become clear whether the tool that you should use to realise it is a computer or a pen or a paintbrush or a piece of wood! The most fun you can have with technology is to use it with intelligence and an inquisitive mind, using things the way that they're not supposed to be used whether that is by throwing things onto a photocopier and hitting copy or dropping a disposable camera into bleach and then taking a bunch of pictures.

So, there you go questions answered, now, you owe us something, don't play it safe, that's all we ask of you, it's scary but please take our word for it, it's worth it, create amazing work that you love and don't concern with the opinions of others, work hard and you will succeed!

Merry Christmas!

Eddy

The response Eddy sent back was concise, and generally very interesting to read, and although personal to DR ME, he names specific influence and designers. Although they have been inspired by the likes of Tibor Kalman, it is hard to tell whether they would have even thought about postmodernism as a discourse whilst creating their own work, and the context and humour in which Kalman created his own work during the 1980s. It would seem as though due to more conceptual backgrounds in art, DR ME work in a very instinctive way, and are unconcerned in the content or context behind work that has influenced them. The bricolage, and appropriation methods they use are not consciously thought out, and so they are a good example of designers that produce postmodern work, that can have theory applied to in the contemporary.

The response DR ME came back to me with will almost certainly be integrated into the dissertation, along with a case study on their work.

Eric Hu was asked questions on postmodernism via his 'process' Tumblr blog. His replies were based on short anonymous questions. He replied to this question:

Hu seemed to respond in quite a defensive way, and perhaps the utter of the word 'postmodernism' made this so. (There is also the social issue of appearing cool.) He refers to postmodernism as a term with 'baggage' in reference to how the term has been used in the past few decades. Nevertheless he pointed out some nice Wikipedia sub-definitions for postmodernism, that however relevant they are, can still be defined by postmodernism as the metanarrative, or overriding discourse. Though it's unsure as to what 'post-internet' could possibly mean. He went onto say that graphic design's progression is 'non-linear', which, ironically would describe postmodernism, though Hu contradicted himself by indirectly saying that postmodernism is linear. Hu's response was disappointing, as he seemed to appear as if he knew what he was talking about in other text posts, but that does not seem to be the case. Or perhaps in this age of Tumblr meaningless bullshit, it boils down to having 'conflicts in opinion'. Of course there will never be a short hand way of describing postmodernism, and of course there are differing opinions, that is a fundamental characteristic of the term...and isn't that what makes postmodernism so damn interesting?

Whether this is relevant research to integrate into the dissertation is yet to be seen.