Things Chris Ashworth Is Working On That You Should Know About
If you aren’t aware, Chris Ashworth is our favorite designer.
Particularly for his work designing the absolute hell out of Raygun (the Bible of style and music), we absolutely love Chris’ work. His art is tactile and visceral and in a very obviously, painfully digital world, he cuts things out, he spills things, he uses his hands. It’s quite a feat, really, and zine makers and xeroxers like us owe him an enormous debt. Lately, Chris has been working on quite a few things. A website, a hard-cover art book, a collection of new and original Swiss Grit T-shirts to be sold on his new and original site, and it is for these reasons that we decided to speak to him, though, to be honest, we’ll take any excuse.
So I saw on Instagram the other day a little post that you put up, thisisme.art can you maybe give us a bit of insight into what's happening there?
Sure man, yeah. thisisme.art is something that my wife Nicola and I have been talking about for, well figuring out for about 17 years. You know, should we do our own thing? We're both very interested in fashion and apparel, particularly my wife. And we've always wanted to do some t-shirts. So I think it all came to fruition when I lost my Microsoft job earlier in the year and I'm a great believer in things happening for a reason. So we were like, let's give this thing a real go.
Sounds exciting.
Thanks! It’s really based around my process and my approach to what I do. So graphic design, typography created by hand - none of that ai nonsense. Really celebrating human creativity in a world where I think robots are taking over. We've got our first drop of t-shirts in a couple of weeks, we're dropping six different designs, limited runs. The whole ethos is inspired and guided by the principles of 'slow fashion' which we're super passionate about - apparel that's built to last, environmentally conscious, ethically made etc.
And ultimately whilst the quality of the high end fabric is maintained - the design is intended to look better with age as it takes on its own unique typographic life through wear and washing.
How have you found translating your print based work onto screens and fabric?
I mean I don't want to say it's more fun, but it almost maybe is. When you see your type on the screen and then the ink going through it, it's pretty special. It's a great process. I tried to buy the screen off the guy, but he’s like “No, it's my favourite screen and I need to keep it”. So yeah.
Fair enough, I would too.
So yeah, there's two sides to this. Apparel and then there's art. I've been doing these pieces every weekend for I'm not sure how long now, called Sound in Print, which is my interpretation of a song in print.
So on the art side to start I’ll drop like twenty or thirty pieces on the website. They're obviously one of a kind. So once they're gone, they're gone. But I have 100’s to work with.
So they're going to be the originals, not prints.
Oh yeah, no, the originals. Yeah. So yeah, I'm kind of excited about that. I'm going to be mortified when the first one goes.
I was going to say, being the hoarder that you are, how are you gonna deal with saying goodbye to these things?
I know. I've taken about 100 photographs of every single one though. I should be ok. So yeah, we're starting with art and apparel and then hopefully we're going to expand it out a little bit. The idea is to keep it small, keep it limited edition. And just, keep it exciting.
Is the apparel along the same lines as the Sound in Print experiments as far as being lyric based?
We're going to do themes. The first six are really sort of core to the brand. I think when you see them some familiar sort of phrases and words will arise.
Yeah.
We've got some good ideas that are not just for a graphic design audience. More cultural ideas that we're excited to do. But yeah, music will play a big part in it all.
Have you got any favourite shirts?
Oh yeah.
What would be a couple of your favourite t-shirts that you have?
There'd be two. Peter Savile factory records one with the original factory logo screen printed. Then, God, I've got my Depeche Mode t-shirt from the Violator era.
And that's the thing I like about a t-shirt and the world I live in. The more that you wear it the more it becomes your own, right? Which is a huge part of what kind of drives me with my work. The idea that everything is kind of unique.
Yeah.
So that degradation and wear and tear is all part of the experience.
It reminds you of a certain time.
That's exactly it.
Any other little details on the shirts?
The label on these tees is not on the inside. It's sewn onto the back of the neck. So the branding, I mean, I'm not a man of many colours. I write in black and white and red. So the label is kind of like a red square stitched onto the back.
A little burst of colour.
Indeed.
And its all launching soon?
Yeah, in a couple of weeks.
Apparently there's a book that you might have been working on?
Yeah, I've been working on a book on and off for the last ten years. It's Swiss Grit Vol Two. Obviously in a logical Ashworth fashion, the second volume’s coming out before the first one. This one covers my work from when I landed at Raygun, so 1997, all the way up until today.
Ten years! Wow.
There's a lot of new stuff in there too. A lot of writing, quite a lot of writing. And I think people will be surprised at exactly how much information based around my work there is.
Is all the writing from you?
Yeah, so it's all mine apart from there's an essay that Lewis Blackwell has written. There's some lyrics on the cover that are written, have been written for the book by a band. Yeah, so that's a bit of a...
Oh.
Bit of a special one. So I'm kind of excited to sort of talk about that. I think when I get the Kickstarter thing going, I'll break that news.
So take me through how the Kickstarter will work, what are you thinking?
I mean it's a hardback book, four hundred and eighty eight pages. It's got a limited edition slipcase printed at Hemlock Press up in Vancouver. They've been amazing at helping me out. With Kickstarter we're doing some limited edition, like sixteen up press sheets. I'm gonna give away some of my archive as well on another level. We have some pretty interesting ideas about how to kind of create some excitement around it.
Oh, that's great. Are there any favourite spreads throughout the book that you really love or is that like asking which one of your children is your favourite?
A little bit. Yeah. Well, I mean, I have lots of favourites, but there's actually a project in there that no one's seen before, which is probably one of the most favourite things I've ever done. I can't show that yet though, but when the book’s done, you will be able to see…
Okay, oh wow. Wll the book focus on the process as well as the work itself?
Yeah, the book is as much about the process and behind the scenes as it is about the finished work. It’s more about the work in progress and the methods and the stories behind the work than the actual finished stuff.
Who would you say will be the target market for this book?
I think the hardcore graphic design audience, right? But yeah, I wrote I could give up graphic design and typography, but I can never give up music, which is a pretty hard thing for me to say. But it's true.
Yeah.
Right, so the book, like it is as much about music as it is about graphic design.
Speaking of music, would you make a playlist that would be good to listen to while reading the book?
Yeah, that'd be cool.
Check out thisisme.art, here.
