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‘Design and Designers’ with Luke Wood
by Corinne Smith on 06/08/2012
Above: The National Grid issues #1 – #7, 2006 – 2011. Edited, designed, and published by Luke Wood and Jonty Valentine.
Designers Luke Wood and Jonty Valentine are the team behind The National Grid. The independent graphic design periodical showcases interesting work you tend not to see in mainstream design publications. Six years and seven publications later, the pair are presenting at SPARK and exhibiting ‘Design and Designers’ at RAMP Gallery in Hamilton. Luke Wood took some time to talk to us about the upcoming exhibition.
Tell us about your upcoming exhibition Design and Designers at the RAMP Gallery in Hamilton.
The title of the exhibition is from a book Max Hailstone wrote and designed in 1985, a chapter of which we republished in our first issue of The National Grid. The plan is to exhibit a collection of things that we have previously reproduced in the pages of The National Grid, like Max’s book. I think we’ve both always thought it’d be really interesting to put all those things in a room together at some point and see what it looks like.
Ever since Jonty and I started the project in 2005 we have talked about using The National Grid as a vehicle to represent projects and ideas that would show a very different picture of what graphic design is about. A lot of the work we’ve published has been very different to the sorts of things you’d have seen in the pages of ProDesign or at the Best Awards for instance. There’s not very much commercial work I suppose, but it’s all more-or-less from the ‘real world’ as they say. Things like the old scoreboard signs from Carlaw Park for instance. Things that Jonty and I wanted to embed in the historical consciousness of design in this country.
Above: Scoreboard signs from Carlaw Park
Above: Poster by Dylan Herkes for The Chandaliers, 2003.
There’ll be a some record covers, cassette tapes and CD covers by some of my favourite NZ designers, as well as a poster-wall. There’ll be books, photographs, postcards, and other sorts of ephemera that have appeared in the publication as well.
The show opens on Monday the 13th of August, and while the show is on we will be making The National Grid #8 as a sort of catalogue for the show. We’re doing it a little differently to how we’ve done things in the past, asking quite a few different people to all write about one thing each. They will be much shorter texts than usual, but there’ll be more of them. We’ll have a launch party for this issue at the RAMP Gallery on the closing night of the exhibition, Friday 14th September.
What have been the high points and the challenges with producing The National Grid?
The high point of this project has undoubtably been the people we have met through doing it. I think it was shortly after publishing our third issue that I read something by the German designer/publisher Christoph Keller saying “books make friends”. At least I think it was him? Perhaps it was someone who was interviewing him, I can’t remember. But that idea, when I read it, really struck me, as I could already see that this was what was happening with our project. We have met a lot of people here in New Zealand obviously, but also internationally. Meeting people like Paul Elliman and Stuart Bailey has been really good for me and for my practice I think. Paul especially. He recently contributed to another publication I made last year, a motorcycle fanzine called Head Full of Snakes. Jonty also wrote for this. I particularly like how with these sorts of projects one can feed into another an vice-versa. I used to work in a very isolated sort of way and The National Grid project has really taught me the value of people.
The challenges? I think the biggest challenge is easily distribution. We actually have developed very good distribution networks, but we do it all ourselves and it takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort to do it properly. Especially if we want to get paid! Actually getting paid is a big challenge. Bookstores here in New Zealand are mostly very good at paying us, but many of our international stockists owe us an awful lot of money. It’s difficult because we sell probably 75% of them overseas and we want to keep doing that obviously, but we need to get paid also.
You’ve previously talked about why you established The National Grid with Jonty Valentine. Initially motivated to start writing about graphic design, but not in a way that would be appropriate for existing publications in New Zealand. This approach enables the discovery of interesting projects and ideas around graphic design that would not reach ‘mainstream’ media or awards. What has been your most interesting discovery to date?
I guess I feel it would be misleading to say that ‘we’ discover things. I think we meet people who put us onto things, or who want to contribute certain things. But the standouts for me in terms of this sort of content would be the work of Dylan Herkes from Stink Magnetic Records (in issue #1), and of Bruce Russell from The Dead C (in issue #2). Certainly David Bennewith and Warren Olds’ interview with Joseph Churchward. And then probably the Victorian typographic journal ‘Typo’ by Robert Coupland Harding. Noel Waite put me onto that.
Above: Typo, 1892. Edited, designed, and printed by Robert Coupland Harding.
What do you see for the future of The National Grid?
Good question. It’s hard to say. I think both Jonty and I want to keep doing it in some way, but we have talked recently about the need for it to change. We are going to try distributing the next issue differently. And even just the way we’re doing it, as a catalogue to the exhibition, has changed it enough to make it interesting again I think. My preference would be to experiment with it a bit more. I feel like we could easily become stuck in a bit of a rut if we don’t keep trying to push the project to evolve. In what direction exactly I don’t really know, but like I say, I’m very happy with how this next issue is coming together.
Above: The National Grid issues #1 – #7, 2006 – 2011. Edited, designed, and published by Luke Wood and Jonty Valentine.
