The Futile Style of London
NEW
at I/O/D website
http://www.backspace.org/iod/

This is London.

Josh.
Precocious small boy steps, jet-lagged,from Club Class. Inch-thick soles
of Airwalk gleaming white as the black run at St. Anton. Droors-brand
army surplus combat trousers and North Face puffa indicating an
intention to do business on and off piste. Self-contained under hood and
high-TOG breathable future fabric. Self-reliance velcroed tightly into
place, an outward manifestation of the prep-school motto–"You are
alone. Trust no-one." It's been a good year for Josh what with his
starting-up WEBCOM.NET. Dad would be proud. Those wild years at
university seemed distant. Saving trees (Dreads! What was he thinking
of?) and sleeping with that girl whose dad was a NUM rep (Fatal mistake!
Don't sleep with the enemy!). The one great thing about this business at
this moment in time is that you can take what used to have cultural
credence and sell it on to the world and his personal assistant. Slow it
down, scratch it in that way that reminds other people of Bronx-bound
trains and Futura 2000 graff. Put some loops over it, something with a
big beat for stomping kids kinda like early Beastie Boys. Add some
titles in fake-fucked Courier, sim-printer-misfeeds and mid-frame
hair-in-the-gate film-stutter to deny all digital process and complete
the whole Radical lo-fi feel. And so Josh extends the business
enterprise of his dad's generation into the 90's. Globe-trotting 007
execs dreaming of Suzie Wong extended by transnational gottabe Goldies
dreaming of Jackie Chan flicks. Where Josh's dad's business was built on
international trade in fossil fuels, Josh makes his wedge from the trade
in cultural currency. It's high tide in the UK for pseudo-Japanese,
infantilised graphics: flat colour, highly delineated, softly curved
outlines, (perfect for Freehand and Illustrator), and moving-in with
Takishi was a stroke of genius for getting it real. A tap into the
mainline of a totally obverse cultural resource. It's hard work fronting
the business and trying to deal with a relationship which demands parity
on every level. Maybe it's the single sex school's fault but too late to
undo the conditioning. "Some other culture's have just got it right.
Thousands of years of people knowing their place and still having the
coolest gadgets."

Justin
Justin, Josh's co-director, is the bread head. Justin used to be an
account manager up West with one of the big-noise, big-budget agencies.
Eight years living a one man yuppie revival in the pristine post-Lloyds
white tower would have tipped a more scrupulous man over the edge.
Walking monochrome corridors,scoping for black-clad door-whores for a
moments abrasion can seem futile , but leaving this cathedral dedicated
to the power of spectacle would invoke an immediate 'access denied' in
the four-star staff canteen. Each day necessitated more urgent solutions
to the problem . How to squeeze into the half-lined, pleated and
turned-up, 2 button, slim lapelled Agnes B? It was obvious that the
countdown had begun. Ground-zero approached fast, like a student out of
the School of Hypermedia Research with an assignment to deliver and a
liberty to take. Why not steal a few clients for yourself and make a go
of it? Everyday could be casual Friday. Imagine: wearing post-rave
leisure wear to WORK. Cool. The two of them came together with the
intention of first cajoling then melding a band of like-minded
individualists into a 'design collective.' In vogue during the summer of
'96 and into the first half of '97, this notion that a loose association
of college friends could turn into an international ad/pr/design agency
for the kids appealed to everyone from TV post-production drones to
fully indoctrinated Royal College post-graduates. Treat the office as a
club, bedroom, chill-out and war-zone and still make a healthy profit
from the communication needs of the world's more obnoxious business
ventures. The best of both worlds: the arrogance of the college leaver
with financial rewards of the superannuated D&AD conformist. For those
that were stylistically disadvantaged by the Eighties, a period of grace
was declared in '97 where transition from besuited thirtysomething to
crophaired young Turk in only-available-in-New-York Nikes was made
possible without anyone openly laughing in your face. The decision to
move over to post-rave conformity had an unbearable inevitability about
it, and the signs of final transformation, the Roni Size CD on repeat
play in the studio, would be accompanied by the first self-reflective
draw on some spliff AT WORK. Crossover achieved. Adolescence recovered.
Keeping the memories of this journey through to the other side alive is
important. Not, as you may expect so that the feeling of achievement
might bolster an otherwise over inflated ego, but because clients love
it. They troop into your studio, (still unhappily besuited) and, faced
with the haze of smoke and the background sounds of ambient darkside
hardstep, feel like they've entered the den of iniquity that they always
suspected lay behind every art student's bedroom door. This is somewhere
they've never been before. Yes, they've had the holidays to Thailand,
Phuket, Bali. OK, so they've visited friends in Hong Kong - and since
handover, Singapore; and they've watched Trainspotting and even read the
book that time, but while they were at Uni they couldn't get close. With
eyes on an MBA at Yale and an internship with ANZ there was no way that
the risk was going to be worth it. So they're in their mid-thirties and
now they can actually BUY into this stuff. "I've got the brains, you've
got the looks. Lets make lots of money." as one of Justin's favourite
songs would have it. For brains they turned to Andy.

Andy
Andy is bright enough and could easily be several rungs up the ladder in
the City fixing Tokyo Marine's corporate intranet or holding the hand of
floor traders as they try to comprehend the inanity of their everyday
lives whilst squinting at the harsh pink and blue representations of
Tiger economies crashing, HEY LOOK! right there, on their screens. He
knows his TCP from his IP, his NLMs from his AUTOEXEC.NCFs. WEBCOM.NET
would have a severely limited skillset had Andy not been delivered with
a 2:1 after going full term at Kings. Server-side backend UNIX flavoured
mindfuck gives most Web designers instant impotence and an overweening
self-doubt. Not good for business let alone personal development. So all
the black arts of CGI and increasingly Java are left to Andy. In most
cultural and technological shifts, people like Andy aren't the public
face of the industry. Now is no exception. They are in no way 'cool'.
They like the same music as their older brothers and dress in whatever
is on the floor and smells least like chip fat or the sweet, baked bean
sweat of teen-boys bedrooms. When this cycle of boom and bust is long
forgotten, Andy will still have his head down and know the worth of a
good PING program. Enough of Andy

Adam
Night time. Brewer Street. Soho. London. Rain on the narrow streets.
Every surface appears as oil. Neon lights, peepshow pinks and reds
fracture the taxi window. Hot ciabatta breath spills steam. Moist hearts
onto dank glass. Adam drops his ennui-laden shoulders inside his Le Mans
inspired jacket and stares that blank Directors stare through
fixed-focus eyes. In his dreams: the plastic grey rear seat, piped with
red, takes a hint from last years Helmut Lang and bucks the trend,
preferring camel as the new black. Transformed by force of will into
soft calfskin. Puckered and buttoned in tasteful restraint against the
lard-arse behind the dry clean only Comme des Garcon poly mix
stay-press. A Saint, a double-Oh-seven. Black leather double breasted
three-quarter length coat could conceal an Uzi. Could conceal the
palmtop-remote-control-video-conference-web-phone. A silent warrior-monk
tooled-up with yet-to-be-fulfilled potential. Wardour Street. Soho.
London. This Director's Cut commands a cross-fade, covetously, into the
parallel world of film and video, where warp-driven, powder-fuelled
lunches thrive on THAT tale of kilos of columbian biked from pillar to
Post. Here's the potential to let your career fly like Tom Cruise in
that Apple ad for Mission Impossible - through the loser-debris of
misplaced zeal and missed Playstation R&D opportunities. Tumbling
through three-sixty to avoid the rotor blade of JeansCorp sanctioned
Shockwave fun, whilst behind you, beneath you and all around, the flak
ricochets from off of shattered WebSite dreams. Feel the cold burn of
inhaled ROM fumes - the exhaust of trashed graphics enthusiasts, blasted
like so many particles, calculated and rendered in full 72 mil
resolution by Silicon Graphics workstations. The beads of sweat form on
Adam's artfully concealed but receding hairline, mirroring the grey rain
as it slides asthmatically down the mildewed taxi window. Every journey
home has been like this recently. A video tape plays and rewinds, caught
in a frenzied loop, wearing his patience thin. Every drop-out amplified.
Each iteration reinforcing the feeling that trust has been misplaced.
That saving your best work for your highest profile client has not paid
off. Art & Business. Like grape and grain. Start out on one. Don't
finish on the other. And the aural signs are starting to show. The
upspeak. Blurted out, too late for modification into much-respected
Albarn mockney. Four long years from version 3 thru 6, slowly losing a
grip on the point of it all. A time for change. Maybe reinvention is the
only solution. Notting Hill. London. Home. Flipping his last ten pence
piece, the severed monarch's head floats, goading, and mocking his
situation. Only one thing left to do: just fucking phone Justin…

Simon Pope 19/02/98