tDR HAS FALLEN: The Foundational Principles of NEXT YEAR'S SNOW
Octa Möbius Sheffner, 2021
What does the word 'brand' even mean anymore?
Part 1
I know what you're thinking. Gatorade is a sugary drink that somehow ties back into sports, having achieved dominance as a cultural link from beverage to competitive art form, career and your questionably sane father's favorite past time. Gatorade is all chemicals. What's Gatorade have to do with sports that the first Olympians don't? Gatorade, still present and in circulation, is extant greatly. Gatorade did not die of natural consequences or an early Plague two thousand years ago. Gatorade did not get slaughtered in a bloody war that resumed immediately after an Olympic pause. Gatorade, as a Now product, asks you to pay attention to its many campaign reforms. It, as extant as it is, has to reinforce its dominance through ad campaigns. A quick little reminder that it still will be in the hands of sportsmen worldwide for the foreseeable future, just in case you didn't remember it was on the test.Part 1
What is the greatest theoretical pitfall a Now product can face?Part 1
That pitfall is backlash. But backlash is a very utilitarian, day to day occurrence. The attention span allotted to the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad and its subsequent fiasco was minimal and was later taken to Keeping Up with the Kardashians to dramatize Ms. Jenner's feelings on partaking in such a campaign. On a global scale, nobody stopped drinking Pepsi or ceded their purchasing of PepsiCo or Frito-Lay products. In fact, you will find these in a majority of households and in a majority of circumstances where they are appropriate. You have to snack, and you have to have something gratifying. Subversion is a flavoring for things that in the Now are utilitarian and omnipresent. A lack of sensitivity to Now real world problems and other such subversions of good taste all spur outrage. Yet a Now product is still constant. Backlash leaves an aftertaste in your mouth you quickly have to douse by putting up with the presence of the Now products. Backlash is unmistakable for anything else, and it gets everybody in your orbit talking. It generates memes, it generates a flood of punchlines and it generates a momentary outpour of resources for the extant problems of the Now.Part 1
That pitfall is backlash. But backlash is a very utilitarian, day to day occurrence. The attention span allotted to the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad and its subsequent fiasco was minimal and was later taken to Keeping Up with the Kardashians to dramatize Ms. Jenner's feelings on partaking in such a campaign. On a global scale, nobody stopped drinking Pepsi or ceded their purchasing of PepsiCo or Frito-Lay products. In fact, you will find these in a majority of households and in a majority of circumstances where they are appropriate. You have to snack, and you have to have something gratifying. Subversion is a flavoring for things that in the Now are utilitarian and omnipresent. A lack of sensitivity to Now real world problems and other such subversions of good taste all spur outrage. Yet a Now product is still constant. Backlash leaves an aftertaste in your mouth you quickly have to douse by putting up with the presence of the Now products. Backlash is unmistakable for anything else, and it gets everybody in your orbit talking. It generates memes, it generates a flood of punchlines and it generates a momentary outpour of resources for the extant problems of the Now.Part 1
I would like to say: god bless your soul if you had actually pitched in for the survival of others on a GoFundMe link or made a donation to a legitimate social rights activism group, all because of whatever issue is at hand and will be spoken of for the next 48 hours. You have seen past the staged, theatrical nature of backlash and cultural telephone and did all a person can truly do and it's offer the support they have for others.Note
In spite of this, this keeps happening. A spark is lit, an Alexandrian fire breaks out and it cools down in a matter of a couple thousand minutes, a few days that pass quickly. There is nothing truly grievious. In the Now, everything is proliferation and weighy mass of engagement.Part 1
Hence the title of this work, the Designer's Republic has fallen. For the purposes of this essay, I will assume you have seen their work on video games such as Wipeout and their myriad of iconic covers for Aphex Twin, Autechre and such other Warp mainstays. tDR made their art futuristic and iconographic, angular and infographic, humorous yet a brand of clinical very potent in the Then. In a 2017 interview with Pitchfork Media, electronic visionary, culture jammer and in his own words, paraphrased, "fearless Russian" Daniel Lopatin recounted that the Safdie brothers insisted on "making it more fucking up", suggesting Lopatin "goes micro" as not to "mimetically revert into Edgar Froese", frontman of progressive electronic outfit Tangerine Dream. Lopatin, in the same train of thought, added that the ability to perfectly emulate Froese was in his DNA. What does it take then, for clean, cutting edge and humorous modernists not to revert back into tDR? At this rate, there is no way to truly return to the primordial, brutally honest and greatly inventive work of tDR, much like there is no way to resurrect Tangerine Dream without invoking thousands of comparisons and associative memory triggers running back a wide variety of mid-late last century science fiction films.Part 1
Tangerine Dream has reached legacy act status, and the Designer's Republic has become a luxury brand. The reselling and sanctioned reprinting of their work at a great premium now has leveled relentless mockers of consumerism against the hypebeast culture of the Now. An iconic tDR design on a newly made hundred-dollar shirt is an officially sanctioned crop of a beloved album cover on a Supreme limited release item. tDR has made its infographic, funhouse mirror corporatist dissemination too effective with time as the Now has caught up to them. They have adapted to their existence outgrowing their principles. They are now the utilitarian status quo of the fallen cyber-fantasticism, becoming the poster child of what is collectively termed 'the Y2K aesthetic'. What now?Part 1
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Helvetica, also known as Neue Haas Grotesk, is a sans-serif typeface. You've seen it everywhere. McDonalds boxes, American Apparel logotypes, the New York subway system, airlines have gotten in on Helvetica too. Their planes are embossed with its many weighings. Microsoft is the most consistent, most easily recognizable offender. Its application of Helvetica Bold Oblique, all white and a tinge dithered for efficiency, was on your Windows XP boot screens as the blue rectangles filled the white outlined oval loading bar, one by one, vanishing into the ether.Part 2
Helvetica, also known as Neue Haas Grotesk, is a sans-serif typeface. You've seen it everywhere. McDonalds boxes, American Apparel logotypes, the New York subway system, airlines have gotten in on Helvetica too. Their planes are embossed with its many weighings. Microsoft is the most consistent, most easily recognizable offender. Its application of Helvetica Bold Oblique, all white and a tinge dithered for efficiency, was on your Windows XP boot screens as the blue rectangles filled the white outlined oval loading bar, one by one, vanishing into the ether.Part 2
A couple months back, on Twitter, I had seen the British-American graphic designer David Rudnick quotetweeting a debate whether fonts made by practitioners of type design should be easily available. It's just a font, right? Rudnick, in his practice, has made a point of making individual typefaces for each project he attempts, even "the boring Helvetica looking ones". It's still just a font, right? We should all be able to peruse your work, it's just text, dude. Right? Wrong. The debate immediately took to mentions of the Designer's Republic and how they would not give away the fruits of their work to anyone, keeping the identity of the piece distinct and their trade secrets close to their own heart. A tDR typeface was their footprint on the client and the shared legacy of the designers paired with the client. And then legacy comes knocking, as legendary entities have to grow into their own influence and offer up simulcras of their work's Magic, reduced to a commodity in the Now. So, you're young, you're free and you have access to every resource under the sun. You can steal anything that has been publicized and you can appropriate any commodity without fear of much legal repercussion. How about Helvetica BQ Regular, the name of the typeface in your Photoshop font choosing preview window, each having their own rendering of the word 'Sample' on the right across from their name & weighing? You think it looks cool, you think it sounds catchy, it's Helvetica. Everybody's heard of Helvetica. Calling yourself after an asset of corporatism doesn't sound really that corporate, does it? It's not like it's subversive, it's just a breed of humor a little different, a little Internet-y. We'll run with it.Part 2
This then isPart 2
