I have wanted to use the word ‘exclusive’ for a while now and I finally get the chance. Creative Dundee can confirm, first, that Ian Anderson (founder of one of the most influential Design Companies of the last 20 years, The Designers Republic) will be speaking at NEoN Digital Arts Festival in Dundee on Saturday 14th November.
The Designers Republic were responsible for many a Graphic Designers professional path, when they appeared on the scene in the late 80’s with their bold, colourful, often witty and, most importantly, conceptual designs.
Ian set up the company to design flyers for a band he managed at the time, Person to Person, and his original designs were based around Russian constructivism.
tDR went on to do lots of work in the music industry during the last 2 decades (often with WARP Records) designing album cover classics for bands such as Aphex Twin, Funkstorung, The Orb, Supergrass, Pulp and Pop Will Eat Itself, Nine Inch Nails, Square Pusher and many others.
It was through the work tDR did with Psygnosis that they gained the most mainstream recognition. Working on the Playstation launch title, Wipeout, they managed to help create a game that fused design and music with programming to create an experience that was completely new in videogames at that time and arguably hasn’t really been equalled since.
tDR always shunned the expected London base, preferring instead to locate themselves in Ian’s home town of Sheffield. They proved they could make this work pulling in huge clients like MTV, Coca-Cola, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sony, Smirnoff, Swatch, Adidas, Virgin and more.
Sadly, The Designers Republic ceased to be in January of this year through a combination of factors and Ian will be discussing this as well as the future of tDR during his speech at NEoN.
NEoN Digital Arts Festival runs from 13 – 15 November, the first 2 days will be focussed on speakers and masterclasses, tickets for this are available here.
The final day will see Video Games Live coming to Dundee to perform at the Caird Hall and you can get tickets for that event here.
Alternatively you can join the NEoN community to be more involved with the event.