Are you also influenced by films? Yes! I love everything by Eric Rohmer, Solaris by Tarkofsky, The Wickerman by Robin Hardy. I love these because they [break from] the classic [approach] to storytelling, and their use of time is very particular, very slow and very unusual.
weird design stuff was a very strong visual reference. The idea was to design [the movie’s] posters to look as if they were made during the ’70s. So the [assignment] was to find subtle ’70s art references and then to design original things that were authentic-looking for that period.
How did Roman Coppola come to use you for his film CQ ? He called me when he saw the Mellow sleeve designs. We proposed working on a video together for them. I was very proud, because I was still in school at the time. The project didn’t happen, but we still wanted to collaborate on something. We stayed in contact and some time later he called me to work on CQ.
You once said in an interview, "Nowadays, occidental design culture has become quite international.” Is this good or bad? Who knows? Maybe the cultural exchange is a good thing. But is this situation providing an exchange of ideas or an exchange of images only? There’s a [design look] common in every country–the computer look. It's crazy to see how a machine could make uniform the visual language to a point where you could guess every program used to construct these images.
CQ takes place in France. Was Coppola looking for someone particularly French to do design for it? I don’t think so. We discovered a common interest in the ’70s–science fiction films, design, and many other things. So we simply thought that it would be interesting to work on something together. What kind of direction was he looking for? Roman did an impressive iconographic search. He was mostly interested in Eurocine references and art and design manifestos. [Industrial designer] Luigi Colani's
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What are you currently listening to in the office? This week I’m listening to a lot of records from International Deejay Gigolo, a German record label based in Munich, in particular DJ Hell. It’s the future of music and their editorial politic is as interesting as the Factory label used to be.
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