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The Designers Republic

The Sheffield studio that gave WipEout its look

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Ian Anderson's Sheffield graphic design studio, founded in 1986, made its name with record sleeves for Pop Will Eat Itself and Warp Records. From 1995 to 1999 it designed the logos, icons and packaging of Psygnosis's WipEout games, the most visible case of a games publisher hiring an outside design studio to give a game an identity. It went into voluntary liquidation in 2009, and Anderson bought back the name and carried on.

Before 1995 a games box usually showed a painting of the hero or a screenshot, under a logo in lettering borrowed from fantasy novels. Then Psygnosis’s WipEout arrived for the new PlayStation in a package that looked like a dance record: clean type, team logos for its racing craft, warning signs and arrows. The look came from The Designers Republic, a graphic design studio in Sheffield best known for record sleeves. Its founder, Ian Anderson, told Edge the point was to avoid “the usual Dungeons and Dragons lettering” and a screen grab, and “to come up with something different to anything that had gone before”.

Fast facts

  • Founded: 14 July 1986, in Sheffield, by Ian Anderson with Nick Phillips.
  • Known for: record sleeves and identities for Pop Will Eat Itself, Warp Records and many bands.
  • Games: WipEout (1995), WipEout 2097 (1996) and Wip3out (1999) for Psygnosis; work for Gremlin’s Hardwar and the packaging of Mass Destruction.
  • 2009: voluntary liquidation; Anderson bought back the name and assets and restarted the studio.

Sleeves and posters

Anderson was born in Croydon in 1961 and came to Sheffield in 1979 to read philosophy at the university. He joined the city’s music scene and managed a band, Person to Person, and Retro Gamer records that the studio began in 1986 to design posters for a band he was managing. Eye magazine dates the declaration of The Designers Republic to Bastille Day, 14 July 1986, made with Nick Phillips.

By 1996 Edge could call it “one of the UK’s top graphic design companies”. It had first come to prominence, the magazine said, by giving the band Pop Will Eat Itself “a stunningly original design identity”, and it was designing for the dance labels Warp and React and for Supergrass, Pulp and Sleeper. It also ran a Sheffield nightclub, The Republic. Retro Gamer describes its style as combining “ironic messages and hyper-consumerism with minimalist and constructivist art influences”, and Creative Review called it “much copied”.

WipEout

The link with WipEout came from inside Psygnosis. “We were contacted by people in the Psygnosis art department who were Designers Republic fans,” Anderson told Edge. “They were aware of some quite obscure stuff we’d done.” Retro Gamer says the studio was first hired only for the box. Then the artist Lee Carus, working late on the game’s opening sequence, noticed a fax from the studio on a colleague’s desk. “I thought to myself, ‘That fax header is cool!’” he told Edge. He scanned it and mapped it onto the side of one of the racing craft, and the team agreed that it suited the game. From there, Anderson said, “we developed the logos, followed by weapon icons for use on-screen”, as well as the packaging for the game and its music CD.

For Psygnosis this was new. “Wipeout was a real first,” said Nicky Carus-Westcott, the game’s chief artist and Psygnosis’s link with the studio. “Before, every element of our games had been done in-house, including the music.” Edge listed the studio’s work beyond the packaging alongside the licensed dance soundtrack and the compilation album as “firsts for a videogame”. The studio’s designer on the game was Michael C. Place, whom Edge later called “Wipeout’s designer at The Designers Republic”.

The partnership lasted for the first three games. For WipEout 2097 in 1996, Computer and Video Games reported, “once again Sheffield boys Designers Republic have been employed to reestablish Wipeout’s cool branding”; the credits list them for “Additional Graphic Design and Styling” and the original packaging. For Wip3out in 1999, the team at Psygnosis’s Leeds studio wanted to strip the look back. “Mike from The Designers Republic loves to keep things simple,” one of the developers told Retro Gamer; “they took a step back and gave us pure design.” Edge noted the studio’s “stylised Japanese touches” on the game’s single city. That December, Psygnosis won the design award at BAFTA’s Interactive Entertainment Awards for the game, “as aided by Designers’ Republic”, in Edge’s words. Retro Gamer says it was the last WipEout the studio designed.

Other games

WipEout’s success brought other offers. In 1997 Computer and Video Games reported that “following the success of WipEout, Gremlin have also employed the Designers Republic to do the artwork and in-game logos” for Hardwar, a trading and combat game set on an alien planet, for which a deal with the studio’s long-standing client Warp Records was about to be signed for the music. The same spring, PC Zone printed a Designers Republic logo for the tank game Mass Destruction, whose credits name the studio for its logo and packaging. Its look travelled further than its contracts: in 1996 Edge noticed that Ocean’s advertisements for Raiden and Zero Divide shared imagery with the studio’s work, though Ocean said the pictures came from Japan.

After WipEout

Michael C. Place left in 2000 and later set up his own studio, Build, in London. In 2012 Build designed the logo, packaging and in-game typeface of Lumines: Electronic Symphony, which Edge reported as the designers’ “second-ever game series” after WipEout.

The Designers Republic closed for business in January 2009, after 23 years. Eye reported that it went into voluntary liquidation, and The Drum listed the reasons Anderson gave: lost clients, unpaid fees, failed pitches and a large tax bill. Anderson bought back the name and assets and restarted it as a smaller studio, with Coca-Cola among its first clients. It was still working in the 2020s. Thames & Hudson published a survey of its work, A to Z of The Designers Republic, and in August 2024 the Saatchi Gallery in London held a talk with Anderson to mark it.

Sources

  • Edge issue 31, April 1996, pp. 61–63, “nuGame culture”: Ocean’s Raiden and Zero Divide adverts; WipEout’s “Designers Republic packaging” and the “firsts for a videogame”; the studio “formed in 1986 and based in Sheffield”, Pop Will Eat Itself, Warp, React, Supergrass, Pulp, Sleeper and The Republic club; Ian Anderson on being contacted by Psygnosis, the lettering and the screen grab, the logos and weapon icons; Nicky Carus-Westcott on the first outside work.
  • Edge issue 142, November 2004, p. 96: Lee Carus and the fax header.
  • Retro Gamer issue 102, May 2012, pp. 65–69: the studio’s founding to design posters for Anderson’s band; its style; clients in games; hired at first for the box art; the fax header; Wip3out and “pure design”; Wip3out as the last WipEout with the studio, after four years.
  • Edge issue 239, April 2012, p. 20: Michael C. Place, “Wipeout’s designer at The Designers Republic”, and Build’s work on Lumines: Electronic Symphony.
  • Computer Arts issue 106, February 2005, pp. 33–37: Place’s part in the studio’s look and his departure in 2000.
  • Computer and Video Games issue 178, September 1996, p. 42: the studio’s return for WipEout 2097. Issue 185, April 1997, pp. 44–45: Hardwar preview, Gremlin employing the studio, Warp Records.
  • Edge issue 72, June 1999, pp. 47 and 107: Wip3out preview and credit. Issue 79, December 1999, p. 8: BAFTA’s Interactive Entertainment Awards, the design award for Wip3out.
  • PC Zone issue 50, May 1997, p. 19: Mass Destruction and its Designers Republic logo.
  • Sega Retro, “Wipeout 2097” and “Mass Destruction” (web, secondary): in-game credits. https://segaretro.org/Wipeout_2097 and https://segaretro.org/Mass_Destruction
  • Liz Farrelly, “Reputations: Ian Anderson”, Eye issue 71, Spring 2009 (web, secondary): Anderson’s background, the founding with Nick Phillips on 14 July 1986, Person to Person, voluntary liquidation in January 2009, the name and assets bought back, Coca-Cola. https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-ian-anderson
  • “The Designers Republic is dead; long live The Designers Republic”, Creative Review, 23 January 2009 (web, secondary): the closure after 23 years; “much-admired, much copied”. https://www.creativereview.co.uk/the-designers-republic-is-dead-long-live-the-designers-republic/
  • “Ian Anderson’s Republic”, The Drum, 19 February 2010 (web, secondary): the reasons for the closure and the relaunch. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2010/02/19/ian-andersons-republic
  • Saatchi Gallery, “In Conversation with Ian Anderson”, 21 August 2024 (web, secondary): A to Z of The Designers Republic (Thames & Hudson). https://www.saatchigallery.com/?p=177951

See also

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