The Designers Republic
| Formation | 14 July 1986 |
|---|---|
| Founders |
|
| Founded at | Sheffield, England |
| Type | Graphic design studio |
| Legal status | Company |
| Website | www |
The Designers Republic (tDR for short) is a graphic design studio based in Sheffield, England, founded in 1986 by Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips. They are best known for electronic music logos and album artwork and their anti-establishment aesthetics, embracing "brash consumerism and the uniform style of corporate brands". Work by tDR is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and the V&A.
The studio in its larger form closed in January 2009, with Anderson stating that it would continue in a more 'slimline' form.
Work by the Designers Republic generally is viewed as "playful and bright" and considered Maximum-minimalist, mixing images from Japanese anime and subvertised corporate logos, with a postmodern tendency towards controversial irony. It often features statements/slogans such as "Work Buy Consume Die", "Robots Build Robots", "Customized Terror", "Buy nothing, pay now", and "Made in the Designers Republic". They also celebrated their northern roots with phrases like "Made in the Designers Republic, North of Nowhere" and "SoYo" (referring to Sheffield's county of South Yorkshire) — affirming they were not from London's design community in Soho.
Initially, Ian Anderson founded The Designers Republic to design flyers for the band Person to Person, which he managed at the time. His first ideas were inspired by Russian constructivism. Nick Phillips, a sculptor and the organ player in World of Twist, soon joined him, and the duo created a visual identity for Fon Records, and album cover for Chakk’s 10 Days in an Elevator. This financed a studio space in the boardroom of a former engineering works.
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