BRITISH

Richard Walker

STUDENT YEARS

4

A PIECE OF SOUND ADVICE + A SINGLE WARNING TO A DESIGN STUDENT

Always finish your work + Don’t feel obliged to have an opinion on everything. If you don’t know, say you don’t know

FAVOURITE FOOD THEN

Indian food

YOUR MOST VALUED POSSESSION THEN

I had an original copy of How to Have a Number One the Easy Way by the KLF

YEAR OF PROJECT

1996

STUDENT PROJECT BRIEF

I think the college brief was a one-day project run by Scott King. Something about ‘breaking the rules of communication’.

COLLEGE

Camberwell College of Arts, London (United Kingdom)

TUTOR(S)

Scott King

COLLABORATOR(S)

Stewart, the printmaking technician at Camberwell College of Arts

TECHNOLOGY

Silkscreen

TIME SPENT

1 day

TYPEFACE

Looks like Gill Sans extra bold

WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS PROJECT?

I liked the sense of urgency.

I liked the fact you could make an attention-grabbing poster with a lot of words.

WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT IT?

I was going for a ‘Pushpin’ look, but got it a bit wrong.

FEEDBACK

Scott King dismissed the work as ‘a bit old’, but was impressed I managed to finish it in one day.

ANYTHING ELSE

The rule, ‘Too many words are counter-productive if you want to grab public attention’ is from a list of rules written by Bill Drummond in the manual How to Have a Number One the Easy Way by The KLF. It was a rule they applied to making pop records. I was seeing if the same rule applied visually. I thought I was being clever at the time, but looking at it again I think it’s a bit naff.

PROJECT SIMILARITIES THEN AND NOW

They were both made at Camberwell College of Arts. I know someone who knows someone who works in the letterpress room, and he did me a favour. They are both playing with words and type. They both state the literal obvious and are a bit ironic. They both used traditional techniques – silkscreen and letterpress. They both took a similar amount of time to make. They both have similar influences from 1960s collectives – namely Pushpin and Fluxus.