Chris Ashworth: 20 Year Issue
Interview by Campbell Milligan.
The pillars of Monster Children are surf, skate, music, art and travel but everyone knows design is the silent one.
Without design there would be no Monster Children, and without Chris Ashworth there would be no design. We’ve been admiring Chris’s sharp and contemporary experimental typographic style since forever. Heading one of the most explorative, iconic print publications of the 90s’ Ray Gun, Chris’s contribution to graphic design and the analog process is nothing less than admirable. He has fervently influenced how we make magazines and what follows is the nerdiest conversation two designers could ever have.
What were you doing in 2003?
It’s funny you picked that year right because that was the year three things happened. I just met my wife at the back end of 2002. We were working at Getty Images together. So we got married and then we quit our jobs. Fuck this, go traveling. And then it turns out I quit design for 14 years.
Oh wow. Did you think about it or did it just leave your mind?
Nah I needed to pause. I’d been on this relentlessly. You know.
I do.
It was quite labor intensive. There weren't computers and things to just whip things up. It was a very consuming kind of process.
How do you feel the industry has changed in the last 20 years? Analog to digital back to analog?
Well, it's changed massively. We’re living in this digital oblivion, you're on screens all the time and everything's digital. It’s pixel perfection and it's just impenetrable to me now. Everyone’s sort of become a designer in a way. You don’t have to go to design school anymore. It's turned into a factory, like a digital factory. AI, right? They can mechanize and automate creativity now. I don't know, I mean, it's quite depressing.
It's all a bit soulless.
It’s interesting that there’s people embracing AI. The whole really slick, shiny futuristic world. Then there's people that are really embracing analog and slowing down. Publishing a magazine is very analog. No one really advertises in them anymore, the news agencies aren't really a thing. I do feel like there's a movement though. A movement for craft again. There’s an audience that are really after it and engaged. There’s people that are passionate about the beauty of human creativity. It took me until a couple of years ago to realise the reason why I do what I do is because it’s my happy place, right? You know when you go into a movie and come out you’ve forgotten what was going on in the world. Art, and making art is like that.
It's like a meditative kind of thing. I love the idea that it works on paper too, like the paper may get yellow or deteriorate. When something is stored away and you pull it out and it has a feeling to it. That’s not going to happen to a pixel. Anyway a lot of your work is anchored around letraset. What will you do when there's no more letraset left?
Well, I've started photocopying it, so that's what you do. I'm running out of Helvetica 148 so I photocopied hundreds of copies. I mean, I kind of got a bit carried away. Cutting out photocopied letrasets with a scalpel is how I did your cover number actually. The cover to my book Disorder is actually a typeset cut up but as you go around to the front I've put a paintbrush over top of it.
Do you photograph it or do you scan it? Like what is your favourite or does it depend on what you're doing?
I just scanned it. I have this piece of crap scanner. It's got all sorts of paint on the glass, I never clean it but you can go up to a thousand DPI on it.
Have you found yourself using the computer for what you need more?
Oh, yeah. I mean, when I came back to designing after a 14 year hiatus one of my designers printed out all the quick keys on a bit of paper for me. And I was like, right, here we go. It's literally like starting again. Where's the power on button? I mean Photoshop's the evil program I would say.You've got to use it, but you know it’s always been evil.
Yeah, we have junior designers come in here and they know all the quick keys. I know what I know to get by but they'll open up something and do all these kinds of crazy things and it takes like three seconds.
I had to put a logo on my website. It was a bit of black type and I needed a transparent background and it took me over three hours to figure out. I fluked it in the end. Like how do you get transparency in Photoshop? Who knows?
PNG. I know that one.
Well, I mean, I should have just called you up but yeah.
When during your career did you start collecting things or knowing to keep things. All your blueprints, proofs, and notes. We'll call it collecting.
You mean hoarding? That’s an issue of mine. I've always done it since I left college and we started our own little design business. I've still got boxes of flyers from then. I could sell everything in my house, but I'd never sell those.
Once you've got this book out will that be all of the collecting?
Well no unfortunately, that's why it's called volume two because then I'm going to start on volume one. When I started doing the book five years ago it was going to be one book but then at some point, I did a page count and it was like north of 1000 pages. Only Irma Boom can do that. I'm not Irma Boom. So I chopped it into two books.
Let's go back, because we started in 2003. How did you get to be at Ray Gun?
Well there was this one illustration teacher at design school. One of the biggest influences on my career. It was an illustration class so I was like okay we're going paint, drawing, sketching all that. Anyway this teacher just goes everyone to come to the front and get a magazine from this box full of magazines he bought. Get a magazine, get a pair of scissors, get a sheet of paper and get back to your desk. Right, okay, what I want you to do is create a layout and that was it. No instructions. Everyone was like, what do you mean create a layout? With what? That was a moment for me. If I had to put design down to one moment that was it. Once I started cutting that thing up, all bets were off. Just wow, you can cut it up? You cut out words, different fonts, put them together, cut out a tone from an advert, just cut out the dark area and make that into a shape, create a composition.
Did you keep that piece of paper?
Yeap.
Great.
At the time the main tutor was teaching us Swiss graphic design - balance, composition, negative space, the grid. But then this moment, being able to cut everything up and put them where I want. This was when Beach Culture and Emigre were happening, going bonkers with fonts and large format magazines. So it was all a melting pot of those things knowing that’s where I wanted to go.
Yep. And what year was this in?
This was like 90, 91.
So when you left college, where were you working with who?
I was working with my best friends from college and looking back we were just trying to prolong that period. Drinking and doing all the same stuff we were doing at college. We were making club flyers. We had the whole of the North of England club flyers monopolized. We didn't make any money, but we got loads of free nights.
What was your first legit job?
I worked in a studio in Sheffield called Egg Design for £140 a week. They were down the road from The Designers Republic, same street. We’d go to the same pub after work and that. I made a book whilst I was there called Interference. I didn't have a computer at home I would wait until my boss would go home in the evenings and I'd go back to work and use his computers to do the book design. And Mike Place, who is a famous designer now, was at The Designers Republic. He would come over and the two of us would do this book. He's credited in the book as the invisible man because we were worried that his boss was going to fire him. Cat's out of the bag now.
There you go, we got a scoop. Thirty years later.
Yeah. Wow. That's an exclusive.
So you were making books at night. You weren’t designing Rag Gun in the UK though? How did you get from working nights in the UK to Santa Monica Boulevard?
An airplane (laughs). No I would always try and chase for new projects. Whenever we finished work, which is why I hoard so many copies, I'd put them in envelopes, write a letter and send them to like a brand that I loved. I sent one to Chris Stevenson who was head of marketing at MTV. He was probably the only person to ever respond. He rang me up and said I like your stuff, I’ve got this MTV event thing. I want you to do some posters. So we started working for MTV from Sheffield. I got to meet Anton Corbyn, which was completely bonkers because I was a big Depeche Mode fan at this point. He was the creative director of the awards show. We'd work with some of his artwork and his hand-painted type. It was just amazing. After that I set up a studio with my friend. We did the cover for Creative Review. Marvin Jarrett, who ran Ray Gun, got in touch with its editor saying he wanted to launch a music magazine in London, and asked if he could recommend any designers. That’s how we got Blah Blah Blah, but then when that went sideways we started Ray Gun. Of course I’ve still got all the boards with all the layouts spray mounted on. So it was Neil Fletcher and I doing that for Marvin.To do that was a dream.
Was it digital by then?
It was more digital but we were making all the pieces and scanning them in so it was still very much analog. We used to do this thing where Neil and I would sit next to each other and we'd swap seats halfway through doing layouts, like swap computers. I really miss that, it was hilarious. You’d like to look over ten minutes later and you'd be like what? It’d just be changed beyond all recognition. It was interesting sitting next to someone, literally swapping chairs and taking over someone.
Did you ever feel like they ruined or were you both quite comfortable with each other?
No, no. We were just joined with the hip. You know when you just make a connection with someone like your brothers? That was me and him. It was so much fun.
Another thing that I thought was always amazing in those magazines was the photography. Did you have a lot of input into that? Like, because just the photo choices and zero.
Zero. It's a funny thing. But no. Art directors that's usually one of their main things, but I don't know, I was never that interested in it. I always liked reacting to it. That was my thing.
I guess digital photography hadn't come in yet either? If I commission a photographer to do something now, you get like a thousand photos. It’s so overwhelming to pick one whereas back then it would have been a proof sheet and you picked the one that you photocopied.
Yeah, right. Oh, man. One of my favourite stories is about this photographer called Peter Anderson. He did a lot of work with Malcolm Garrett. He came into our studio one day, he’s a Scottish guy and I just got some prints I thought I'd bring in and show you. He’s got a photo of Dennis Hopper in 1970, and Peter Hook that sort of stuff. These were all printed. We just put them all out on the floor and were like you’ve got to be kidding me? It was such a wonderful way to experience photography. We were like okay, brilliant. Right, you're in. If you ever see that image, it's got just this beautiful quality to it.
That's crazy. You were saying you find it really hard to edit your work, why is that?
When you work for a brand you always have a reaction to what you do. I actually enjoy the process of thinking things through strategically, thinking about the audience, thinking about how you can attract that audience. That side of it, I'm really quite fond of, but when I'm doing my own stuff, I just wanna do it on my own. I always know when it's finished. Don’t get me wrong I've done a load of shit stuff where I look at it the next day and I'm like, ‘right, that is going in the bin,’ but I very rarely come back to something and rework it.[1] You know like when I did the cover for Issue 65 of Monster Children I did it over three or four nights.I don't remember scrapping anything. It just kind of came together in stages on the paper.
Do you ever have those moments where you can pull something together really quickly?
Yep. I do. I feel like I’m constantly fighting for that simplicity of being able to do things without thinking.
If you could go back to 2003 and give yourself some advice, what would it be?
Buy as much vinyl as you can.
What has been your most memorable mistake? Even if it leads to a positive thing? A good mistake.
About five years ago, I got this email from one of the coolest brands in the world. When I read this email, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. This has got to be a hoax. I got on a video call with them and it was for real. They asked me to do a project and where I could write my own brief with no real deadline so I can do what I want. I can do it whenever I want. I thought about it for three or four weeks and I came up with what I thought was a great idea. Replied to them and then just never received a response. Never! That’s the thing that niggles at me because I don’t care if they didn’t approve, I would just love to know what it was that I did that stopped them from replying?
Maybe you need to call them out on this and they'll hear.
No, but I'm not going to name it. But why?
Where do you want to see your work moving forward?
Just to be able to make a living from making things. One of the main things I really want to explore in the next ten years is scale. I’ve always lived in a paper dimension, whether it's a record sleeve or a magazine. I want to go big.
You mean like murals and things like that?
Nah you know Ed Rocha or someone that does big, just big scale art? And then you know, T-shirts and apparel and all that. Get into different places where the art can live.
Right. Finally what is Monster Children to you? And by that, I don't necessarily mean our magazine, but magazines in general.
To me, it's a window into a good reality, a reality that has a soul, a reality that has rawness, a reality that has some counterculture, some alternative. There’s just something special about the quality of a good magazine. Even just the smell of it.[2] It just gets your senses going and it gets your emotions going. You feel it, right? You feel it. You can't feel things on a screen. There's always going to be something about it - a beautiful window.
Get your hands on the 20 Year Anniversary Issue, here.
