TBI Q&A: Luke Wood of The National Grid

Launched in response to what graphic designers Luke Wood and Jonty Valentine saw as a void in NZ's design discourse, The National Grid embraces the country's more provocative practitioners and issues that are sidelined by the mainstream media and design industry. "Government-led initiatives like Better By Design are all fired up about 'innovation'," says Wood, "yet they are fundamentally conservative and unable to recognise that evolution is almost always entirely marginal."During what hours of the day do you feel most inspired?
I'm not sure about inspiration. It sounds a bit cartoony - you know, the light-bulb above your head. It sounds like the kind of word the Better By Design people would throw around, alongside 'innovation' and 'value-added'. I guess I believe more in hard work and in the evolution of ideas. I'd prefer to talk about motivation more than inspiration. Or even excitement perhaps? I certainly feel motivated and excited sometimes. Usually when I get a chance to sit down and read something good, or just listen to records or something.

How would a good friend describe your aesthetic or style?
Someone last year described some posters I was doing as "white-trash modernism". They meant it as a derogatory thing but I didn't mind it. It sort of sums up nicely where I've come from.

What aspect of your creative practice gives you the biggest thrill?
Hindsight.

How do you think your environment affects your work?
Well, I live outside of Christchurch, which is a pretty awful city really. But the good thing about being down here is that you have to make your own fun, and ever since I came down here I've been very productive. It also makes me leave fairly regularly, and there's that constant desire to always be looking elsewhere, which, I think, is very healthy.

Do you like to look at the big picture or focus on the details?
I think when I'm actually working on something I tend to get bogged down in detail. Even to the point that it can become quite debilitating. In the sense that nothing ever seems to come out perfectly how you want it. Which gets back to that answer just before about hindsight - in hindsight, the details disappear and the bigger picture becomes clearer, and I'm usually happier with that.

What was your motivation for starting The National Grid?
I think initially Jonty Valentine and I set up this publication because we wanted to start trying to write about graphic design, but not in a way that would be appropriate for existing publications in New Zealand. With that in mind, we soon realised that there was quite a lot of interesting stuff happening in and around graphic design in New Zealand that was never going to make it into the pages of Prodesign or Urbis, or worse yet the BeST Design Awards.

Both of our backgrounds were in art publishing - we'd both worked with galleries and artists around New Zealand to produce books and catalogues etc - and I think at some point we just wondered why design couldn't be talked about, treated, and represented in a similar way, by which I mean a more literate and ambitious sort of approach. Design writing in New Zealand - graphic design especially - tends to be dumbed-down for some reason. Perhaps it's that old idea that designers don't read? The National Grid was set up to go against that attitude, but also with some understanding that it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from publishing a magazine?
The importance of our ability to develop a community around the publication has probably been our biggest and most valuable discovery. Perhaps this just sounds self-evident, but at the very beginning we were very naïve about all of this. Without our contributors this project wouldn't exist at all, and they deserve 99% of the credit here.

Easily the hardest thing about setting this publication up has been the fact that we are trying to find, cultivate and support a whole bunch of new 'writers' who mostly aren't writers at all, but practitioners like us, who feel that we might write about design in ways that are more speculative, resonant and useful than what we are currently used to seeing/reading in pre-existing publications on the subject in New Zealand.

How is The National Grid funded, and how does this affect the magazine's production?
The National Grid carries no advertising and is funded through sponsorship, grants and goodwill. The printing of the first two issues was partly funded by Canterbury University because, as a lecturer there, I was able to put it down as 'research'. We didn't want the publication to be entirely academic, however - we like the idea that it can float around somewhere between academia and professional practice - and so inevitably we went our separate ways.

For our next two issues - #3 and #4 - we have received funding for printing from Creative New Zealand, which came as something of a surprise, and for which we are extremely grateful. Unfortunately though it doesn't seem to matter how much money you have, it's still almost impossible to get good printing done in New Zealand.

The fact that we rely on an awfully large amount of goodwill affects our production in two ways that I can think of right now. Firstly, and most importantly, people are generally doing things for us and/or giving things to us because they care. And I think that comes across in the publication - it has a sense of genuine 'care' about it (this is why I get so upset when printers rush it through and bugger things up). The only downside to this, and I'm not complaining, is that we can't really hurry people along. We have to wait for things to come in, rather than set hard and fast deadlines.

Many niche publications move online to avoid large overheads. What is it about print that appeals to you?
Partly it's just that my background is in design for print. I've never really designed a website and I certainly can't build them. To be honest, I don't spend a lot of time on the internet either - I prefer to read a magazine or a book. I suppose I was attracted to graphic design in the first place because I liked posters, magazines and books.

More objectively, perhaps, part of the motivation to do the publication was that it should be an archive of some sort, and I guess I'm still sceptical about the longevity of digital archives as opposed to libraries. I've lost a lot of work over the years because of dodgy hard-drives. I know there are some happy mediums between online/print out there now, and Natural Selection is a really good example. I like what they're doing a lot, I'm just not sure that kind of approach would be appropriate for us.

What do you think are the biggest challenges currently facing graphic designers in New Zealand?
Well, right now - having just had another print job go horribly wrong - I'd say it's printing! Printers here seem to approach their work as a 'trade' rather than a 'craft'. I suppose this is a result of growth and progress, and time-is-money, but it is a shame. Especially when more and more people are starting to send big print jobs - especially books - overseas.

Aside from this little gripe, I think the biggest problems facing graphic design in New Zealand are entirely internal - to do with the immediate community of practice. The so-called 'industry' is very small, and as a result generally dominated by purely commercial interests. Which is fine and necessary, but I think various other cultural aspects of design are often forgotten, or, if not, their inclusion/representation is tokenistic and cheesy. The small size of the community also means it has trouble supporting its more marginal and provocative participants. Recent government-led initiatives like Better By Design are all fired up about 'innovation', yet they are fundamentally conservative and unable to recognise that evolution is almost always entirely marginal.

I could get carried away, but the problem, I suppose, is simple and eternal - how to make interesting work and still support yourself. I see new and interesting things happening though, new studios etc, that do give cause for optimism. The problem there is, of course, that it's hard to find out about these people because their efforts aren't recognised within the mainstream media.

Who or what has inspired you recently?
Well, a couple of years ago I met and interviewed Dylan Herkes, who runs a very small independent recording label called Stink Magnetic. He has also played in a number of bands, and has done a lot of design work for gig posters and tape, CD and record covers. I really liked his work on a formal level, and then talking to him I realised that the same aesthetic was there in his approach to less physical things like touring and distribution as well. Following this, I interviewed Bruce Russell last year, with a bit more of a specific idea of what I was interested in - the aesthetics of distribution - and, of course, a lot of what Bruce had to say about his efforts in terms of independent publishing has motivated me since. It's meeting new people like Dylan and Bruce that makes things interesting and keeps me going.

If you could go back and choose a completely different career path to the one you've chosen, what would it be?
I always wanted to be a long-haul truck driver (and I'm still hoping that might happen sometime, actually).

What place is always with you, wherever you go?
I'm not really all that sentimental, but probably right now - Anna Dean's parents' house outside of Nelson.

What's the best way to listen to music, and why?
I like to see small bands playing live in small shitty bars. And drinking. Recordings are never 'right' (and usually totally over-produced). Music is generally written or composed live (well, the stuff I listen to is anyway) and it just sounds best like that. And this will sound very corny, but I suppose I like the more direct/immediate connection between someone making a noise and someone being there listening to it at that point in time. I'm probably just old-fashioned - we saw lots of live music when we were young.

You are given a piece of string, a stick and some fabric. What do you make?
An envelope of some sort to send it all back.

What's the best stress relief advice you've ever been given?
I don't handle stress very well, and so I get this sort of advice all the time, but I'm afraid I'm a bad listener too and I really can't remember any of it.

What's great about today?
It's sunny and my motorbike is finally registered and warranted!

Interview by Cass Hesom-Williams

18/9/07

The National Grid #3 Launch Party
With special guest Bruce Russell
When: 22 September 2007, 5.30pm
Where: Artspace, Level 1, 300 K' Road, Auckland

Win copies of The National Grid
The Big Idea has two sets of issues 2 and 3 of The National Grid to give away. To go in the draw, send an email with your name and address to editor@thebigidea.co.nz with 'The National Grid' in the subject line. Prizes will be drawn Monday 24 September at 5pm.