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Cool, guys! All you have to do is put arabic text over the Joy Division Unknown Pleasures design and then you can put your name on it as the designer!
Ridiculous.
If Ian Curtis were alive today, he'd already hanged himself again.
Is the image in public domain somehow? Didn't Saville just pull it directly out of a textbook?
Either way, I've never heard of Brendan Donnelly but someone should track him down and tell him that copying and pasting foreign text on an iconic image in no way constitutes 'designing.'
I think its missing some tribal symbols, maybe add a skull somewhere as well.
"AVANT GUARDE HIGHEST FASHION. NOW NOW this is it people, these are the brands no one fucking knows and people are like WTF. they do everything by hand in their freaking secret basement and shit."
Don´t see how it is anything worse than Raf or Undercover using it.. Although it´s often more out of context with others using it.
A valid question, which is not easy to answer. With Raf and Jun it's about broadcasting the things that influenced them as people, and by extension as designers. Could be the same with this guy. So then it becomes about how it is done. Not very well in this case, I'd say.
Unless the designer is an Arab Muslim and his goal was to display tension between prohibitive, traditional Muslim culture and the inevitable influence of Western pop-culture (god, I sound like an academic)... which judging by the guy's name is not the case.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
but current NN tees with Cobain that retails at almost the double of what his tees did last year is even worse.
I think it's a little different, seeing as it's number (n)ine's swan song. Although miyashita's done similar graphic tees numerous times in the past, it feels fitting here. With jun, who's entire collection revolves around a the unknown pleasures graphic, it feels needless and repetitive. However, with n(n)'s final collection the theme is very different, and the unifying concept for his work has always been rock music. Given the circumstances I think that the image of one his fallen idols has more meaning behind it than undercover or raf using 'joy division' as theme of some sort. I also see a closed feeling as being more of a fan service, culling all sorts of imagery from previous collections and is more self aware than this fall's undercover stuff.
I'd also like to say that I don't see the undercover pieces as having anything to do with joy division in terms of mood or atmosphere, and seems more to do with the graphic itself. The only real homage I see is the a reference to 'transmission' with the static knits, but I could be wrong.
I feel like maybe this post would have been more fitting for the undercover or n(n) thread... This is far too heavy of shit to be discussed here.
Here's the problem I see with it as a graphic designer:
Peter Saville harnessed the image (and very well) to convey a particular mood set by an album. THIRTY years ago.
There.
It's done. It's 'designed,' so to speak. Finished.
Is it any worse than Raf or Jun using it? In context and even in execution, enough to separate it from this. Apply the image to a constructed garment at least managed to add an extra step in there. In the end, it's all about marketing and to a degree, about identification for a 'line' or an established 'designer' vs. some dude who placed the image and the type on an illustrator template and sent it for output.
Sorry, guys. That's not 'designing.' At best, it's sampling and desktop publishing. At worst, it's straight up thievery and ego masturbation to include your name on an iconic image that actually stood for something of excellence at one point. The fact that Saville allowed it to be used for a Supreme shirt or a DC shoe is just as laughable but at least he's the guy who harnessed it in the first place so he gets a pass.
The image already has a name attached to it. That's it. The end.
Anyone at this point in time attaching their name to something that may have already even been around and identifiable before they were even born is just a joke.
I'm a designer. It's how I make my living. I create things from scratch, generally even down to the typefaces for most of the stuff I do.
I don't care how acceptable pop culture or consumerism makes it, taking an image that's already called and adding some text to it isn't 'designing.' I expect Urban Outfitters to do shit like this.
They have a proven track record of stealing images from smaller agencies and clothing companies and literally stealing money out of these designer's pockets. They're in business to make money and to lead hipsters by the bit selling mass produced t-shirts by the shit ton.
But someone having the gall to attach their name to this image for some dime store knock off is straight up retarded.
I wouldn't get so worked up about it if A.) I hadn't made my living for 15 years actually creating images and B.) it was for something like Urban Outfitters .
Maybe this will catch the eye of Brendan Donnelly (again, whom I've never heard of and won't bother Googling) and he can defend attaching his name to it. But if the first time I've heard of a designer's name it just happens to be attached to an iconic image that's been around for 30 years, I'm calling bullshit.
I agree with what you say here. But if the inspiration they find in Joy Division is possible to see in the collection, then why bother with using a print? Seems like a no brainer to me, or at least still not better than anyone else using it. They just too the easy way around.
I agree with the last one being worse though, but current NN tees with Cobain that retails at almost the double of what his tees did last year is even worse.
Well, Raf, and especially Jun, reinterpreted them in their own way. I don't know if that has any validity for you (EDIT: Basically what beardown said). The cropped pants I have by Undercover, the print is textured into the fabric - that's pretty neat, almost invisible, and definitely not reproducible by a mass designer.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
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