Buy Nothing! Pay Now!

It´s now three month after the Designers Republic closed their doors, and now CR Blog has published an article about the relevance and the dialectic dilemma of the influential company.


It´s an entertaining read that focusses on the different stages of tDR`s work, as they moved from logo parody to "digital baroque" and later to abstract and obscure pseudo-architecture, while the mainstream followed, copied and eventually even hired them.

Wordle Up!

I tried to create a wordle word cloud containing everything that was written on this blog, but more than one page is obviously not analysed by the program. Anyway, I love that the three most prominent words read "like great music"! (click pick to see big)



Experimenting with fewer words: "From Revolution to Revelation" is a line from Pet Shop Boys´"My October Symphony". After a few randomisations Wordle changed the design "To Revolution from Revelation".

The next try contained the embedding code of the last picture, resulting in a "wordle revolution".

What would a wordle from Japanese Kanji symbols look like? It turns out that Wordle is not kanji-ready yet, transforming the text into pure cubism.



Before and after:


Checking out the wordle gallery is fun. Of course many people have already condensed the works of Goethe and Leviticus. Can you write a new story or poem out of a wordle cloud or is it a new form of algorhythmic newspeak?

However, the aesthetic value of some wordles is amazing and it turns everybody into an instant graphic designer or poet (at least for fifteen minutes.)
In the light of the recent demise of The Designers Republic these auto-art features take on a whole new meaning. "I love my Designers Republic"

Design 8 Itself

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The Designers Republic announced last week that they have been forced to shut down due to several unlucky occurrences that all involve money.

Well, during the last years tDR has grown into a very large enterprise that had to run after corporate money in order to keep itself alive. It might have looked strange to their early followers that they were designing the international look of Coca Cola since 2006. According to founder Ian Anderson, he was also aware of this break in ethics and he plans to bring tDR back, probably on a much smaller scale. Design ate itself!

But anyway, If you look through some of their record sleeves (and other works in public spaces from the last 20+ years, it is safe to say that no other company (or single designer) has had such an enormous and lasting impact on graphic design as tDR.
There was Hipgnosis in the seventies, followed by heroes Neville Brody, Peter Saville, Russell Mills and 23 Envelope in the eighties. Designers Republic took all this, wrapped it up and ran with it. You can still spot a good tDR sleeve from one of the countless imitators that followed them.

Of course, thanks to tDR we now have loads of annoying graphic designers who like to have their photographs taken while holding up a fresh din a0-print, most likely sporting a stupid calendar-wisdom in a wacky type face.

Hee hee hee, yes! Wipeout!

Let ´em Bleep!

When the madness of Acid-House died down a bit by the end of the eighties, it was time for a breather. But we were not ready for ambient and wall-paper-chill yet. Around the time the British house scene found their own sound by channeling Detroit, Electro, Jamaica and the BBC Radio Workshop.


New labels like "WARP", "Shut up and Dance", "Outer Rhythm" and "Network" were pioneering the sound that was fittingly called "Bleep", or "Bleep & Bass", or "Bleep & Clonk". Actually, "Clonk" was a mini-genre in it´s own right, and I always found it very interesting that the words "bleep" and "clonk" are appearing on the same page in William Burroughs novel "Nova Express" from 1964! Yes, I am sad, I know...

"Bleep" came at the right time for me. The German Techno sound that was developing at the time was never my cup of tea. Far too unfunky and boring for my taste.

The "Warp"-sound however had the right mixture of futurism, rhythmic invention and a nerdy infatuation with sound. Instead of cooking up the same, tired Front 242 formula with "Blade Runner" images, the new "sound of Sheffield" was forward looking, micro-funky and -on the right soundsystem- absolutely earth shattering.

Then of course there was the iconography of the emerging Designers Republic, who helped to carve an image for this futuristic sound.


The scene was a bit incestuous and orbited around studio wizard Mark "Moloko" Brydon and the Fon Studio in Sheffield. Other recurring figures were Richard H. Kirk from Cabaret Voltaire, the late Lee Newman and Michael Wells and - of course - the co-founder of WARP Records and seminal producer Robert Gordon.

In fact, this "Tricky Disco" was clearly music for boys. A new form of bachelor-pad music, which had guys racking up their subwoofers while dreaming up chat-up lines like: "Why don´t you come up to my place and I show you my BASS!"


It didn´t make a big impact on the German club-scene and for the most part it was mostly listened to in an environment that drove your neighbours or parents nuts.

I have written several unfinished "Bleep"-posts, but I recently found out that others have written about the subject much better and with far more authority than I ever could.

Looking back, what was considered to be "state-of-the-art"-music was actually pretty low-tech. Even by the standards of 1989. Acid used "dated" instruments, which were for the most part out of production by the time people started to dig the squelchy sound of the 303.


The "Bleep"-scene used similar instruments. Instead of the expensive Fairlight or Emulator, they utilised older gear and the cheaper samplers which began to appear on the market.

Especially Rob Gordon went further in his attempt to deconstruct the prefabricated sounds by programming them in slower, unusual rhythm patterns. The studio and its effect-boards became another crucial instrument to experiment with sounds.

The subsonic bass and the overall polished production was a product of people who knew their way around a studio. Gordons´ rhythms were syncopated, minimal and often folded in on itself. In all it´s abstract glory and "machinespeak" aesthetic, his productions were often very soulful and heralded a new form of pop-music.


Maybe "Bleep" will never have a real "revival" because it never went away for the people who were into it in the first place. I also believe that the kids of 1989, who are now well in their 30s and beyond, are for the most part interested in looking forward by transporting their "baggage" with them.

I see the current interest in the eerily titled "hauntology" as a result of trying to refrain from wallowing in nostalgia by re-constructing the lost emotions and echoing sounds of the past into a relevant and up-to-date framework. "Meta nostalgia", if you will.

In this regard I see the brilliant net-label Bleepfiend which was born out of an idea by Gutterbreakz.


Bleepfiend is bound to collect unreleased home-recordings from the electronic scene before fully digital home-recording became available. A time when people were still working with minimal equipment, cheap samplers with a sampling time of one second, 4-track tape machines and so on.

As Bleepfind explains: The music on offer was recorded in a time before the Internet made it possible to upload, share and promote work to a wider audience. This is music that never had a chance to be heard by anyone outside the artist's immediate circle of friends. But still it exists...it's forgotten potential locked in the ferric particles of dusty cassette tapes.

At the time of writing there are two releases available for download, which once more show the heavy influence the BBC Radio Workshop must have had on British kids.

Their "Dr. Who" was my "Kraftwerk".

The sound range of a Youtube clip (and laptop speakers) is of course unable to give a good example of what I am talking about. Anyway, here is a Rob Gordon Remix of "Yeah You" by The Step. It´s magic!

Coco Steel & Lovebomb

Set Me Free!

Feel It!