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 | | Exclusive Interview |
Page 2 of 2 "Elephant has this jauntiness about it which you don't always get with these heavy faces, especially the 'G'." "Yes, the 'G' has become quite iconic for us." Sister had some interesting uses too, such as Li-Lets. "Sister was originally developed as an italic version of Elephant. What I wanted was an italic version that didn't slant. I wanted a face that did all the things italics do but in a roman. I used a different, more organic set of curves." Although Hague professes admiration for the work of Gareth Unger and Zuzanne Licko, the influences on the Alias collection are more often shaped by the demands of specific briefs than by traditional techniques. For example, when the city of Glasgow needed a font for its stint as 1999 UK City of Architecture, Alias submitted 'Factory' which crosses the appearance of Gaelic letter forms with a visual interpretation of the city's industrial heritage. Jackdaw also came about because of a brief, this time for a toothpaste. Wishing to somehow merge the effect of chiselled and calligraphic letter forms, Hague visited a cemetery. This gothic setting probably explains the name. "One of my enduring images of Hammer Horror films is a scene where you see a corpse swinging from a tree and this jackdaw coming up and plucking its eye out. " Very nice. One question I like to ask graphic artists is what would be their dream commission. The answer came very quickly. "Designing a typeface for the United Kingdom would be good." But he won't hold his breath. "No. I doubt the powers that be would choose anything that wasn't thoroughly market-researched and focus-grouped. It would be nice to do something that wasn't dependent on those factors." This is another bee in Mr Hague's bonnet: the crushing formality of design by committee and consultation; the mediocrity of work that is tested and researched out of all its originality and dynamism. He appears to long for a more pro-active design culture. "For example, with the Bauhaus, the graphic design was part of the whole development in industrial techniques and also in the quasi-political message which went beyond the shapes of letters into the shapes of machines and ultimately into the shapes of society." This relates to something he would like to develop for Alias, something he calls a 'synthesis of message and medium.' "I was drawing this quite expressive piece and thinking what I could put against it to give it a suitable context, so I developed this series of phrases that I thought were interesting and that I thought could say something about the typeface. The idea would be to get a hit - not just from the words - but from the means of expression - in the same way graffiti works as a conduit of expression that is outside of normal channels." Currently he is planning to use this idea for a series of poster showings of Alias type. The phrases used will be deliberately oblique. "I want people to interpret the message for themselves." As the interview drew to a close, I felt obliged to ask one more question. Alias is such a modern enterprise, and their outlook so contemporary, were they interested in any older art forms: paintings or sculpture perhaps?" "I'm not really interested in the past or the future. What interests me is the present. I collect ceramics, but not anything that's old. Oh, and I collect carrier bags - the shapes of now." "Let's get this straight. You actually keep a collection of carrier bags at home?" "Sadly, yes." Follow that, I thought. But I couldn't. | | |
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