CD_

For those that haven’t seen your work, could you describe it to us and tell us a bit about where you draw your inspiration from ?

JK_

My influences range widely. When I first started taking design seriously it was all hardcore punk and fantazia-esque flyers and ephemera, but lately I’ve been trying to incorporate these more subtly. I think Even as I move perhaps towards something more typically european style I still have these original references in my heart. They just surface in less obvious ways. In overzealous and luscious colour schemes; thick and oozing, This almost replaces out-there typographic choices and developments. Originally (in education) It felt rebellious but now is really very acceptable.

Largely my work is very visceral and introverted, I find it difficult to explain my theoretical influences. Some of my favorite Books i regard as guide posts are; RVST: Club Moral, The Exhibition book for Energy Flash at M HKA in Antwerp (we actually caught this while in Belgium thanks to my girlfriend), All Possible Futures, Mark Fisher’s ‘K-punk’ and CCRU writings (and works beyond really), Nest Magazine, OMNI magazine. Classics like Ways of Seeing and Brockman’s Raster Systems. The film 21-87 by Lipsett has had a really lasting effect on me too. Largely theme’s in my work revolve around the contrast between community isolation and freedom. This while as an abstraction in my own work permeates into they type of work I get and the physicality of that and vice versa. Its all really one big thing with no borders. 

CD_

You design a lot of flyers for nights, how important is the actual music to your approach when designing them?

JK_

Obviously a visual has to be vaguely appropriate in a practical sense in order to be pitch-able usually (this is a general rule in bread and butter work). But with something as abstract as music, this doesn’t really apply to the degree it does in the real world for me. Again, it is more about feeling and building a repore with an event or party. Having a feeling for their bookings. If a booker jumps around with bookings and the aesthetic has to aswell it’s going to turn out horribly. I’m however obviously not opposed to a night changing and growing ito themselves naturally.

I don’t sit and listen to the music while I make the poster usually If that’s what you’re asking. To some degree it influences but its largely personally stylistic - without blanketing all work with one personal style. I still consider each piece specifically designed though - rather than a person(s) with a style they just whack on anything and add some text. This makes it a little arbitrary for me. It’s a balance of different things that go into the pot.

Usually I would want a long-term working relationship with a night as this results in the best work. I believe the aim is to have people that love a night, rather than a singular booking (a good night makes good bookings) if this makes sense? People recognize a familiarity that forms a visual language that invokes trust and memories. A great example of this is Swing Ting in Manchester - People go to Swing Ting and hey if they have a booking then great but its usually just on the event alone.

CD_

Would you say you take a different approach when designing for personal work rather than club night artwork ?

JK_

Club culture and my own work are symbiotic and born of each other. Its something I hold so dear because of its pure form. Its something birthed of communal existence. Something that opposes the goals or the ruling classes. These are stamped out slowly in the form of Standing at football games and the repetitive beats public order act of 1994. People were given seat numbers and swapped a collective existence for corperate individuality. This makes rave flyers inherently Working Class. I even love really shite flyers for drum and bass nights ect - its almost folk art and truly representative. I’d take that over a well kempt Swiss event flyer anyday. Most nightlife is a dreary nightmare.

I take a different approach to designing type faces and editorial work for sure, I remove myself a little, it is more objective. It’s a whole different thinking system that kicks in. That stuff is much more swiss influenced and systematic. There is always that little spice in there though, thats my voice and I’d never want a piece not to have that. It might sound like a romantic notion when describing graphic design but I really believe that your life, feelings and experience is visible in design. 

CD_

 Are there times when you’re faced with creative blocks ? If so how do you combat these ?

JK_

The past few months has been a big block for me, I think you just have to get back to looking at sources and getting back ‘into’ things. Its easy to end up in a closed loop whirring with the prominence of design blogs. If we exist in a space where design journalism determines what kind of work is created, as a result of people wanted to get featured on them, then we exist in a space which is anti progressive and therefore most design journalism is anti-progressive in my opinion.

I don’t have a solid formula for combatting creative blocks, I just usually take some time to be a person. I come back feeling more enthusiastic and wanting to do more. 

CD_

In the last few years there's been a big resurgence of earlier rave culture coming through in music and design, what do you think has made it so appealing for everyone again?

JK_

I can’t really speak too much on music as my knowledge is limited but I think I can touch a little on my own experiences of this in design. I think Burial said it best when he described his music as what he thought rave music was like from the stories from his brother (this is poorly paraphrased from memory). This is a kind of parallel translation for whats happening now in the post Rudnick era, with his original work opening a chasm. I think the digital age has a part of it too. ‘Internet art’ at the beginning of the millennium was so different to how its perceived today as a phrase. I think people went crazy for it when it was first emerging, as a tool of freedom for expression. I think this subsided as it became more mainstream but now we have a generation of designers that have recently matured with the internet being a constant omnipotent presence in their life and people reflect this as a life theme so much more naturally than they have before. As much as artists have represented sex, love or any other presence in their lives. I think people are coming to terms with machine dominated man. You see this in illegible type, remnant of science fiction presented in a serious design discourse. There is always the case of un-contextualized trends but largely I think it’s something more innate. 

My personal work is starting to move away from this more aesthetically, but with similar themes of freedom, community and isolation played out more subtely. 

CD_

Have you got any projects coming up that you can tell us about ?

JK_

I’ve got a long term project named ‘symbols in a machine war’ that will surface eventually as a print and web project. As with everything personal its slow moving on constantly shifting. Largely it’s a patch work of different mediums that explore the three themes listed above and the relationships between them today. Kerouacs descriptions of jazz in the beat generation, clippings of film and literature as well as my own work. Visceral human feeling seeping through the cracks of the post digitally industrialized age. These elements would be brought together into something non-linear but rather collective evoking a feeling. Similar to the film Slacker or 21-87, a feeling built from snippets and intersections rather than a story presented. I think most magazines rely on the visual language for this, but I want that approach to visual language to extend into the content. We have magazines that exist mostly as beautiful things, magazines that exist to be well designed and I just want to exaggerate this further. 

Big thanks to Jack for taking the time to do the interview. You can check out more of his work HERE