Art Chantry (Hugh McCormick)
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Transcript of Art Chantry (Hugh McCormick)
ATR
CHANTRY
1
Hailing from one of the scummiest,
most depressing places in the US,
Art Chantry was a perfect product
of his environment. Most known
for his posters and band album
covers such as The Sonics, Flaming
Lips and Nirvana. He walked the
line between precise, letter-pressed
type and chaotic collage. Like the
counterculture icons he designed
for, he was a counterculture icon
in his grungy, loud, crude and wild
design style. As a poster designer, he
was the 1970’s and 1980’s equivalent
of todays propaganda style street
artists. His style was demonstrating
grunge qualities way before the 90’s
and the grunge movement became
evident.
“In Tacoma, one does not merely shoot another in the head. In Tacoma, they find your decapitated skull in a paper bag tossed behind some bushes with “Do not open till X-mas” scrawled on the side with a magic marker”
HANRY Logos: 1986-7 retail logos and
labels(left): 1985 poster for New City Theatre
2
Chantry’s style is best recognized
by his ability to lift vintage images
and juxtapose large, often destroyed,
damaged text while applying his own
style to the images. His style suits the
hot rod and punk band culture he
represents in his posters, album covers
and logos while still showing his at-
tentiveness to precise placement, size
relations and choice of color.
Working hand’s on is another
great influence of Chantry’s style. He
describes enjoying moving around
pieces of paper and type, admitting
that if he had to sit in front of a screen
all day, he would lose his mind. He
even admits to resisting push-button
phones, still using a rotary dial tele-
phone in his office.
(clockwise from top): 1989 logo for K2 snow-boards, logos from 1986 Union Sportswear, LP design for band “Thee Headcoats”
(right): 1994 Posters for Rhino Records
3
“I’m a big fan of amateurism, and I think
amateurism is where all new ideas come from,
the do-it-yourself syndrome”
Art Chantry is extremely particular about his choice of clientele, rarely working for large corporate com-panies. In the past he has turned down companies such as Coca-cola, Nike and Microsoft. On the other hand, he has accepted jobs from clientel he defines as “sociopaths.” In a interview with Lonnie Stacatto, he admitted to working for pimps, pornographers, drug dealers and at one point considered working for a South American gun-runner. Chantry’s opinion about working for these characters is that they are no different from corporate businessmen. In fact, he claims that “ all businessmen are sociopaths” and that America rewards those without conscious. In this way, busi-ness executives are no better than pimps and drug dealers in Chantry’s opinion.
“I’m a big fan of amateurism, and I think
amateurism is where all new ideas come from,
the do-it-yourself syndrome”
1983 Poster for Empty Space, various band logos
In the 1970’s, when Chantry moved
to Seattle, he became the creative and
visually inspiring talent his clients
needed to push, promote and stoke
their causes. He designed large, loud
posters that were a perfect mixture of
the chaos of collage and the clarity of
type.
Only when someone has experi-
ence in fundamental, hands on
design do they gain the essential
skills to create great designs. This is
one of the key factors that as played
into the fact that Chantry still
designs strictly by hand and avoids
computers.
When asked about his hands on
design style, Chantry discusses it as
a necessity of good design. In a 1998
interview, Chantry mentioned that
nowadays, design has a “technical
knowledge base,” that people believe
being a graphic designer involves
only a firm understanding of design
computer programs.
One of Chantry’s most compelling point is that designers have spent their lives dedicated to separating Graphic Design as an art form. Chan-try believes that the fact businesses are now staying in-house for their designs and using designers as the engineers for making designs come to life is ridiculous and destroys graphic designers’ credibility.
serving as Art Director for Seattle’s free tabloid, The Rocket, he coordi-nated artists and designers alike on a low budget, creating inspiring work that continue to be admired.Although Chantry has been design-ing through the time of transition to designing on computers, he has refused to turn to technology and in fact frequently speaks out against it.
Also,
Band Logos(left): Tribute poster
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“and because everybody has got a computer now, and everybody can buy a design disk, prices are dropping and we have to buy $20,000 worth of equipment just to main-tain the lowest level of competency, and at the same time we’re expected to take on all these additional skills at no extra charge. I mean, how long are we gonna put up with this shit? That’s ridiculous. That’s just absurd. But everybody in the design industry just embraces it as “it’s progress, it’s wonderful,” but it’s not when you think about it, we’re just getting screwed.”
(top): 1996 t-shirt design (Right): Poster for 1986 Give Peace a Dance for Legs Against Arms
9
Chantry, Art. Interview by Jaime Sheehan. Per-sonal interview. Seat-tle, Washington, May 1, 1998. “Hot Head: The Art Chan-
try Interview.” Estrus
Records. http://www.
estrus.com/interviews/
hothead.html (accessed
April 23, 2013).Lasky, Julie, and Art Chantry. Some people can’t surf: the graphic design of Art Chantry. San Francis-co: Chronicle Books, 2001.
“MoMA PS1: Exhibitions:
Art Chantry: Greatest Hits,
Vol. 1 .” MoMA PS1. http://
momaps1.org/exhibitions/
view/197 (accessed April
23, 2013).
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