PastPresentFuture

Design Manchester

PastPresentFuture brings you recordings from leading designers around the world talking about creative influence, places, practice and ideas.

Graphic designers are asked three questions: firstly, can you remember the first piece of graphic design you saw; when and where was this? Secondly, what are you working on right now, and thirdly, do you have any advice for today’s graphic design students?

PastPresentFuture was conceived and curated by John Rooney, Malcolm Garrett and John Owens — a Design Manchester production.

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82 episodes
Updated Feb 1, 2022

Episodes82

Newest first

Dec 20, 2021 · 9 min
(Season TWO) Harriet Atkinson
Dr Harriet Atkinson is a historian of art, design and culture, with a particular interest in the uses of design for propaganda and protest, nation building and diplomacy, from the 1930s to the present day. She leads the research project '"The Materialisation of Persuasion": Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953', which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and will result in two books, a film and a podcast series. She co-leads the research strand on Graphic Design Histories at University of Brighton's Centre for Design History.
Dec 20, 2021 · 39 min
(Season TWO) Muiz
Muiz is an artist, designer and art director specialising in bi-lingual Arabic and Latin type, branding and publication design. His practise develops radical new aesthetics that are inspired by the centuries to millennia old work of master crafts people, from calligraphers and potters, to architects and armourers across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. Proudly born, raised and educated in Manchester, Muiz has represented his home town on the international stage, working with Bruno Maag, Erik Spiekermann, Huda Smithsjuzen AbiFares, and clients including Audi, Bloomsbury, Foreign Policy, Hermès, Qatar Museums Authority and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Dec 7, 2021 · 6 min
(Season TWO) Wendy Wong
Wendy Wong is an illustrator, originally from Manchester, now based in London. She studied fashion textiles at the University of the Arts London, graduating with honours in 2014. Inspired by awkward body shapes, cartoons and her own life experiences, Wendy's illustrations could be described as silly, low-brow, sometimes irreverent but always full of joy, humour and positivity. Featured in: Pit Magazine, Refinery29, Digital Arts Magazine, Fuse Magazine, Popshot Magazine and Creative Boom.
Dec 7, 2021 · 3 min
(Season TWO) Luke Tonge
Luke Tonge is a graphic designer, lecturer, and events wrangler in Birmingham. He specialises in identity & editorial work for brands, agencies and charities. As an introvert he finds it ironic to now spend most of his time on some sort of stage. He's a visiting lecturer at Birmingham City University and co-director of Birmingham Design, the organisation responsible for the Birmingham Design Festival.
Dec 7, 2021 · 10 min
(Season TWO) Ian Swift (Swifty)
Ian Swift is a graphic artist, typographer and designer who has become recognised for his pioneering and maverick approach within contemporary British graphic design. Swift was one of the first designers in the UK to embrace the Apple Macintosh’s potential as a design tool whilst studying at Manchester Polytechnic in 1985. This new digital approach attracted the attention of Neville Brody and in ‘86 Swift subsequently joined the design team at the eighties style bible The Face magazine before becoming art director of its sister magazine Arena two years later. He also was senior designer at Neville Brody Associates from 1998-1990. For nearly two decades he was art director of Straight No Chaser (SNC) ‘the magazine of world jazz jive’, which became a vehicle for his hybrid design techniques and radical page layouts and later for his own bespoke font creations. SNC magazine became the centre of the emerging jazz dance scene and two decades on retains its global reputation as a black music journal, recently publishing its 100th issue. In 1990 Swifty Typografix was founded in London’s Hoxton Square where his studio began creating logos, label identities and record covers for a growing client base including Talkin Loud, Island Records and MoWax Recordings. One of the new breed of designers to embrace typeface design and the democratisation of font production, Swift launched ‘Typomatic' in 1997 as the UK's first independent Font foundry to showcase his font designs including Dolce Vita, Cut it Out and Coltrane. Typomatic will be re-launched this year with old and new fonts, remastered in ‘open type’ format. ‘The Graphic Art of Ian Swift’ (volume one) published in 2018, covers hybrid design work of the 1990’s illuminating his techniques, working roughs and mechanical artworks from the cut and paste days up to the millennium Volume 2 has just been released, with a focus on more recent and personal projects from the last two decades including clothing and apparel, paintings, wall art, print and silk screen editions. Swift’s current practice reflects his enduring interest and commitment to type, typography, lettering and font design and a return to earlier experimental graphic processes fusing materials and techniques and combining analogue and digital skills to create innovative artworks and print editions.
Dec 7, 2021 · 1 min
(Season TWO) Nico Sharpe
Graphic Designer Nico Sharpe
Dec 7, 2021 · 4 min
(Season TWO) Dani Molyneux
Dani Molyneux is a typographic artist and designer. Her experience is extensive — she has worked for leading creative agencies across the country for a diverse range of clients. From corporates + mega giants to indies + arts orgs. She’s art directed international photo shoots and created award-winning campaigns. After working everyone else’s way, Dani wanted to work a different way. She launched Dotto® in 2017 to make meaningful work with good people. People who have something to say, and want to say it loud. Dotto is community, collaboration and taking up space. Powerful messages through playful type.
Dec 7, 2021 · 16 min
(Season TWO) Johnny Marr
Johnny Marr first achieved fame as the guitarist and co-songwriter of The Smiths, who were active from 1982 to 1987. He has since performed with numerous other bands and embarked on a solo career. Having released an album titled Boomslang in 2003 under the name Johnny Marr and the Healers, Marr released his first solo album, The Messenger, in 2013. His second solo album, Playland, was released in 2014, followed by a third, Call the Comet, in 2018. Marr's autobiography, Set the Boy Free, was published in 2016. Voted the fourth-best guitarist of the last 30 years in a poll conducted by the BBC in 2010, Phil Alexander, editor-in-chief of Mojo, has described Marr as "arguably Britain's last great guitar stylist". In 2013, NME honoured Marr with its "Godlike Genius" award, hailing him: "Not content with rewriting the history of music with one of the world's greatest ever bands, the Smiths, he's continued to push boundaries and evolve throughout his career, working with some of the best and most exciting artists on the planet."
Dec 7, 2021 · 1 min
(Season TWO) Neeraj Kainth
Neeraj Kainth is a Graphic Designer who works across a range of disciplines including Brand Identity, Print and Editorial. Neeraj is a member of his local design scene in Birmingham, organising and hosting various creative networks and events such as Birmingham Design Festival and Fuse Birmingham.
Dec 7, 2021 · 5 min
(Season TWO) Mary Hemingway
Mary Hemingway is a graphic designer and founder of platform DesignbyWomen. With a background in both surface pattern and graphic design, Mary’s work combines her love of colour and pattern with experimental use of layout and typography. She specialises in creating visual identities and editorial design for creative agencies, individual brands and public sector organisations. After noticing how few women were celebrated in the design world at events and award ceremonies, she started DesignbyWomen in June 2020, as a self-initiated lock-down project. The platform aims to celebrate, showcase and inspire women, marginalised genders and gender non-conforming creatives currently working in the design industry. Through celebrating work and sharing insights and stories, Mary hopes to encourage collaboration, provide visibility and greater inclusion for women creatives at all stages in their careers.
Dec 7, 2021 · 6 min
(Season TWO) Maxine Gregson
Maxine Gregson began her career as a digital designer in one of the first digital agency in the UK, AMX digital, headed up by Malcolm Garrett. Working on projects for Universal Music, EMI, Barclays, Science Museum, ICA and D&AD. Over the last 10 years Maxine has worked across online and offline integrated campaigns for clients such as Mercedes, Nivea Men, Cadburys, & Experience design for Peugeot / Citroën DS and The Electoral Commission.
Dec 7, 2021 · 8 min
(Season TWO) Mark Farrow
Mark Farrow was named Designer of the Year in the Creative Review Peer Poll in 2004, voting him ‘the most important graphic designer working today’. His career began in the early 1980s designing experimental sleeves and posters for Factory Records, and The Haçienda, This has since continued with a longstanding creative partnership with Pet Shop Boys, Spiritualized and Manic Street Preachers. His minimalist approach, and a rigorous, highly precise attention to detail defines his aesthetic, and appeals to a broad spectrum of clients, from museums and galleries to pop music and retail, product designers and architects, to restaurateurs and artists. In 2009 he was given the honour of Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) by the RSA.
Dec 7, 2021 · 27 min
(Season TWO) Martyn Evans
Martyn is a product designer and design academic with 20 years research, teaching and leadership experience and is Director of Manchester School of Art. Interested in the strategic role that design commands in a variety of settings, his research explores the approaches designers use to conceptualise and communicate the future. With broad experience of design as future making, he has presented on this and related topics, nationally and internationally. He is a reviewer for a number of research councils and was appointed as a strategic reviewer for the AHRC in 2017.
Dec 7, 2021 · 3 min
(Season TWO) Tara Collette
I am an artist who works predominantly with textiles, reimagining objects symbolic of our contemporary culture from banners of high-street food retailers to keyring miniatures of iconic snacks. The banners I create are exaggerations and parodies of things I love within mass/modern culture – the Lidl logo banner, created in collaboration with Matthew Challenger, translates the logo from a supermarket emblem to something almost nostalgic – my love for banners comes from an obsession with Trade Union banners and fellow banner maker and friend – Ed Hall.
Dec 1, 2021 · 8 min
(Season ONE) Sarah Boris
Sarah Boris is an artist and graphic designer based in London. After working for over ten years for organisations such as Phaidon, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Barbican, she set up her own studio in 2015, with a focus on branding, editorial design and developing her art practice. In parallel to commissioned projects Sarah creates artworks during artist residencies and in collaboration with printmakers (letterpress, riso and screenprinting). PastPresentFuture was devised with a simple premise: contributing designers were asked three questions. First, can you remember the first piece of graphic design you saw, when and where was this? Second, what are you working on right now, and third, do you have any advice for today’s graphic design students?
Dec 1, 2021 · 9 min
(Season ONE) Patrick Thomas
Patrick Thomas is a graphic artist, author and educator. He studied at Central Saint Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London before relocating to Barcelona in 1991 where he founded the multidisciplinary studio ‘laVista’. In 2005 he published ‘Black & White’ a compilation of his work for the International Press. In 2011 Laurence King Publishing, London, published his second book ‘Protest Stencil Toolkit’, which sold out. He is currently working on the follow-up, due to be released in 2018. In 2007 he established his first silkscreen press and decided to concentrate on releasing personal, uncommissioned work. Since then has exhibited his limited-editions across five continents, where many are now held in private and public collections. He has given talks about his practice and held workshops worldwide, extensively in the UK, Spain and Germany. Between 2004–05 he was Graphic Research Fellow at Liverpool School of Art (Liverpool John Moores University) and since October 2013 he is a professor of visual communication at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.
Dec 1, 2021 · 7 min
(Season ONE) Angus Hyland
Angus Hyland is a graphic designer, author and creative director. He has been named one of the UK’s top ten graphic designers by The Independent, and has received over a hundred creative awards, including five D&AD silver awards.
Dec 1, 2021 · 4 min
(Season ONE) Trevor Jackson
Trevor Jackson is a multi-disciplinary creative with decades of experience and expertise in design, music, art and fashion. Collaborating with a diverse selection of clients from major international brands to smaller radical independents. His passion for producing bold and innovative work, along with active involvement within multiple significant subcultures has resulted in a highly respected career and an expansive body of critically acclaimed works.
Dec 1, 2021 · 5 min
(Season ONE) Craig Oldham
The Office Of Craig Oldham is the eponymous practice of designer and creative consultant Craig Oldham (obviously). Working across numerous disciplines, the studio creates brands, books, websites, films, exhibitions, and objects. We also teach, write, curate and consult. And we do this for clients, audiences, and sometimes just for the joy of it. We are a young and intentionally small team of creative problem solvers, makers and doers. And with extensive industry experience, we’ve learnt that the better the relationship we have with a client, the better the work will be. So far we’ve been recognised by Art Directors Club, D&AD, Design Week Awards, Creative Review, New York Festivals, Type Directors Club, as well as national and international press coverage and exhibitions. Last year, a book we wrote and designed was included in the 50 best in the world of 2013.
Dec 1, 2021 · 10 min
(Season ONE) Jane Plüer
Associate Partner, Pentagram