Beer and Loafing in LS11

When the going gets weird, the weird move to Beeston.

Went to Holbeck . . . Nobody was there.

Last night I ReTweeted a post from the Creative Class Struggle blog. The blog is dedicated to challenging the Richard Florida approach to urban regeneration. It wasn't a very in-depth critique but I really liked the posters that advertised a conference. They are really worth checking out.

Not long afterward I noticed a tweet from the agency I criticised the other day for perpetrating that We Love Holbeck website. They ReTweeted the link from the original source, remarking and...FUCK ME! It's all in CAPS! I took that as a veiled response to my argument that the use of CAPS on the website was a tad excessive. Fair enough I thought, I'm not exactly consistent . . . though the use of CAPS on a political poster with short, snappy slogans did seem more reasonable than on a long discursive website. Just an aesthetic judgment, but one I'm willing to defend. But then minutes after the agency tweeted this;

Reason why Vaughan Oliver is a typographic God is that he used fonts that nobody else understood or wanted to use + he went out on sat night.

I did take this as a bit of an affront, for at least three reasons.

Firstly there's the assumption that because I'm from LS11 I'm a bit lacking in the upstairs department. Bungalow Phil from Beeston who wouldn't know his Vaughan Oliver from his Jamie Reid. True, I'm not a graphic designer but I have read every word ever written by Rick Poyner, one of the champions of Vaughan Oliver's work. I'd recommend any graphic designer to read this essay by Poyner in the Magazine Typotheque. It's about design criticism. He asks,

Do designers form any significant part of that remaining core of readers with a commitment to ideas and the independent life of the mind, expressed through the act of reading? Are they, in other words, really interested in criticism? And, conversely, are those with a commitment to ideas the slightest bit interested in design? These are daunting questions, when framed in those terms, as I think you’ll probably agree.

It's a long essay but one really worth the effort. I won't summarize what Poyner has to say, just leave you with his last thought, which I think is absolutely spot on;

The problem for design is that it almost dares not open its eyes to what is really going on, to its own complicity, and to its manifest failure to face up to its own responsibilities and argue convincingly that design might be anything other than a servant of commercial interests. Start pulling the knot with any determination and the whole arrangement might begin to unravel. No, there’s too much at stake. Better to pretend design’s few critics are “naïve” or “elitist,” do your best to ignore them, carry on regardless, and perhaps it will blow over soon.

Plenty of people around Holbeck know exactly what's going on and have the critical vocabulary to engage with the problems productively. I'm not sure the same can be said for our imported regeneration, creative, and design community.

Point number two . . . it's smashing to have heroes. I can't see what's wrong with having people to look up to, people whose talent is so extraordinary that it takes your breath away, people who seem to be beyond the general run of things. I have plenty of my own heroes . . Tony Harrison for one. A Holbeck lad who writes stuff that people find very difficult and often distasteful. And Vernon Scannell, a really fine but sadly neglected poet and novelist who once lived in my street back in the 1950's. Both these guys have done things I admire, things I could never hope to achieve, things that I often really don't get. They did a lot of it right here inSouth Leeds. I don't go around imposing my admittedly severe and selective taste for post-modern poetry on my clients or neighbours, however. If anyone asks me I'm more than willing to engage and with a bit of luck educate and inform. I don't think less of people if they don't share my private enthusiasms.

And my third point is, why sink to abuse if you haven't got the balls to say it to my face! I'm really pleased that Vaughan Oliver got himself a social life. I was out with a mate on Saturday afternoon, in The Cross Keys, in Holbeck. On Saturday evening I went to the Midnight Bell to meet up with a friend but she ended up having a domestic crisis . . . the pub was pretty empty (Holbeck Urban Village is dead in the evenings, especially the weekends when the workers aren't around) so I decided it was more fun to go home and tweet. And this afternoon I went back to the Midnight Bell to meet up with my friend Anthony, and then we spent a couple of hours walking around LS11. We're doing a project together. A project on Holbeck. We hope it will be creative. Most of all, we hope it will tell the truth about Holbeck and not peddle some bland, saccharine, anodyne fairy story that the regeneration puppet masters would like us to fall for. We didn't see many people at all today. The only person who we spoke to was a policeman who was anxious to know what we were up to . . . he wasn't used to seeing people in Holbeck at that time of day. It was so unusual he found us suspicious. He did believe us when we said we were doing it for art . . . why else would two guys be wandering around talking animatedly in that part of South Leeds at that time of the afternoon . . . had to be art.

Anyway, enough for today. Tomorrow I want to return to the question of We Love Holbeck and design. I really don't get it.