Peter Saville Research and Views of Vanderslice

When researching Peter Saville, I found that his work covered an extensive amount of visual style and philosophical influence. Not like ancient Greek philosophical influences, but more of a personal opinion sort of influence. Saville cares greatly for his work and cares a lot about making something beautiful. His care and concern with being involved with the work and wanting to make something aesthetically pleasing is what drives his work ethic and is also what forms his opinions about design work in general.

He is very relaxed about his work and is rather notorious for missing deadlines. One of his friends, and clients, claims that the wait is worth it though. He says that Saville gets in touch with the work he is trying to create an identity for (in his friends case album artwork). He listens to the music and thinks about the feel and mood of the music. He gets in touch with the identity he is trying to create.

Saville is mostly known for his album artwork, but his work has reached farther than just record sleeves. He has done fashion design catalogues for Yohji Yamamoto, some freelance identity work through Peter Saville Associates, and has even been commissioned to design a cultural identity for the city of Manchester, his birthplace. His work has almost entirely consisted of creating identities for the products he is advertising.

The philosophy he employs behind his identity work is where Saville's genius shines. He is said to be able to capture the sheer epitome of whatever he is designing for. This would explain the personal and thorough connection he establishes between himself and his work and that which he works for. He creates a mood and persona and essence in his design work that goes beyond suiting for what he is designing for. And he always did this without ever referencing the actual object he was creating the identity for. In his early Yohji Yamamoto fashion catalogues he didn't  even use images of the clothing. Most of the time he would use some overused Photostock-like image and combine it with some text.

This is essentially what I will try to attempt in my poster for the theoretical Peter Saville lecture. I want to capture the epitome of Vanderslice without visually depicting it. I will do this by photographing parts of it that speak its visual essence the best.

Slide show presentation here.