SPARK
SI-021, from issue 4, 2022.
Color?
James Goggin is a Providence-based British and/or Australian graphic designer and teacher from London via Sydney, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Auckland, Arnhem, and Chicago. He runs a design practice named Practise, together with partner Shan James, working on books, websites, identity systems, exhibitions, typefaces, videos, textiles, posters, magazines, signs, and symbols.
JG I loved color, from rainbows to prisms and the science of color itself. Color is purely based on perception, but we have books that code colors by numbers, and you have to pay for these books. I was fascinated by Pantone and how they packaged and commodified a sensory phenomenon.
UDÖ With Pantone, you are buying for the insurance that the color you see will be communicated correctly and accurately.
JG Color is so subjective that we may need Pantone or CMYK numbers to have a standard across countries. Over time I realized that the printing houses are not pulling a specific bucket of that color off the shelf, but each printing expert has to make the mix following these instructions. There is an element of mystery, subjectivity, and mood of the day that contributes to the color you are getting on that project. Looking at what might seem boring or the day-to-day stuff that goes without saying brings me a great sense of creativity and criticality. It’s literally just asking questions. The simpler and more mundane the question, the better and more profound… What is it that I am interested in color? I was less interested in colors themselves but color as code in different cultures and how color is commodified today. Each time I gave a lecture on it, I understood my thoughts slightly better.
JG It’s the lecture that I would talk about giving that lecture in other public talks where I talk about my work. Lecture in a lecture, a little meta.
UDÖ Maybe that’s because the presentation of your color lecture is reminiscent of being in Times Square. I definitely remember the feeling of being submerged in color rectangles more than the words there. Is the purpose of the lecture to give people an awareness of color?
JG When you are preparing a presentation, you have an ambition of controlling what people take away from it, but people would take other things from it. So hearing that you remember your sensory experience the most, why can’t we give a typography lecture with music and multiple screens? This lecture makes me started thinking more about activating the classroom. Actually, I was going to do a residency at ArtLab in Harvard about the idea of activating classrooms during lectures in April 2020, but the pandemic made that impossible. So how can I make the multisensory experience that I describe more deliberate in capturing all different kinds of learners?
UDÖ It also makes an argument as to why university education is still relevant when a lot of course material is readily available online. Maybe multimedia lectures give people a Disneyland-like experience.
JG However, turning the lecture into a spectacle can defeat its purpose because it will be more about the show than the content. It is about finding a delicate balance between the two. I was inspired by art in this matter. Artists often have a single research topic, and they iterate and evolve, and I thought, why can’t graphic design also have that. What if my color lectures just keep evolving? It’s a more honest way to work because you can take criticism and improve rather than it only happens once and done.
JG The fact that I worked in exhibition design for artists in the past had a huge impact on the format of “Pop Culture Color Theory”. I just wanted to apply how an architect would think about space to lecture spaces too.
JG When we moved to the US in 2010, I quickly learned healthcare is connected to your job in the States, and it changes everything. It changes workplace dynamics. People are more aggressive because they fear losing their job and therefore losing their healthcare. Even though universal healthcare is categorized as a socialist idea, it is anti-entrepreneurial to not have it because it holds people from taking risks. You can argue that universal healthcare is essential for the American Dream because it is based on everyone’s ability to start their own business and make it in the capitalist economy. I never understood this tension.
UDÖ Did you ever have a situation where people were more aggressive in their jobs?
JG When I was working for MCA Chicago, I thought everyone was there for their appreciation of arts and culture. I quickly learned that different departments would work against each other because everyone wanted to make themselves look better. It all comes down to healthcare because there is a survival instinct tied to keeping your job. So everyone needs to make point about their importance in the organization.
UDÖ Do you have another experience where situations are different from what you originally thought how they would be?
JG I used to pride myself on working on cultural projects: artist catalogs, charities, album covers, etc. But workign in the cultural sector is just as dirty as working for Google, really. I did ten years of work with the Tate in London, and they were sponsored by BP and Barclays Bank, which funded the arms trade. It’s less easy to distinguish an ethical project right now because the money is coming from all over the place. So I am less idealistic now.
this interview is edited for clarity and concision.
follow James Goggin here
more about Practise here
interview by Utkan Dora Öncül
Spark Interview-021