Tails of a graphic design wingman #3 - Peter Saville

Designing the promotions for the San Francisco AIGA designer lecture series had a few perks. One was as part of the promotional materials, I got to design bus shelters, which were huge - 4’x5’. The Design was minimalistic, spoofing the importance of design, calling it out as equal to “god.” Knowing the concept of the campaign would be controversial, we intentionally sat on all our finished work until past our deadline, which, of course, made the new, young, and very nice director of the AIGASF - Amos Klausner - super nervous. He was reluctant to approve the concept but knew he didn’t have much choice, so the work was produced as proposed. 

The other perk to designing the materials was to be invited to the post-lecture dinner at one of the nicer SF restaurants. Dinner with Peter Saville, the legendary designer for Factory Records who, as a young design student, I ripped off before finding my own direction. As we were getting settled, the waiter asked who was interested in the wine list, which Peter quickly grabbed. You could see Amos looking a bit worried; Peter really was a “Rock Star” designer who was a regular at after-hours, post-concert soirees. As Peter looked over the list, we could all see Amos’ anxiety growing and growing until he finally couldn’t stand it. Knowing there were bottles on the list for several hundred dollars, he nervously blurted out, “Keep in mind we are a member-funded organization.” Peter, of course, was a considerate guest and did not take advantage.

Over dinner, he told the story of his brief time as a Pentagram partner - most people don’t realize he was a partner. I don’t know if he was asked to leave or dropped out on his own, but he spoke highly of the office, impressed with how they ran their partnership. He went on to talk about how the partners, at least at that time, all shared the profits equally, which was surprising given some partners would seem to be bringing in much more work than others. Peter said every year, they rank the partner’s profitability, meaning someone was always at the bottom of the list, but no one was ever at the bottom of the list more than once.