I work anywhere, with minimal resources. I like it. Being in the fog. Fog on yourself or on assignment, on coworkers. Lightning is coming.
With Martin Kubát
Michal Rydval
So I'll start. As you know, I actually like all your stuff, author's books, free drawings, your covers of Fra books, posters for Café Fra, whatever. I love it. I see and feel that it can't be otherwise. Today's design is actually the opposite of what you do. Fetish of the banal, an endlessly cleaned copy of the forgotten, trends of trends, a certain emptyness and coldness. And I'm not even interested in products as an approach and assumptions. Hard to say, and I don't care if any of your things are design , but I wonder what you think of him. Are you watching, do you enjoy something and someone, and if so, why?
Martin Kubát
Graphic design. You can't even notice him. It climbs everywhere, inside and out Kubat is stuck with it. The piece falls, there's another.
Graphic design, magic wand, power tool.
Graphic design, plus words, lyrics… I confess, somewhere in me, deeply, is my dad. Such an intermediate state. A state full of whispers, synchronization with something unnecessary, etching. Before we soak into the duster, and then again, a piece of us falls out somewhere on the baking sheet.
I'm trying not to see, to read in terms of graphic design, rather to reach under that costume. I'm interested in that.
But I like graphic design.
One of the pearls, from the place of residence. Stříbrná Skalice. Shop in Marjánka. In front of him sitting in a toadstool for a beer. They have everything, Mr. Owner Excellent adds: everything in first class quality. Their banners! Joy! The local, old, groom Karel, a studied graphic artist, preaches with a dried brush. Super cannibal! Potatoes. Salami. Daily 8-22. I had one of my favorites, but it got a reconstruction this season, and I don't like it anymore. You can find banners everywhere, you go on a trip to the forest, you come home with the information that in the shop on Marjánka špekáčky and ovar knees are in action. Well, Karel is already talking about it, he probably does it, I guess so strangely dreamed, and then he goes to the copier, black and white print on A4. But the bacon remained great.
MR
So I'd like to meet Karl. It occurs to me when I came from the gym to the barn, where I then met you at the end, I thought that design is just about anything, the white line of a plane in the sky, whatever. And then boom, I was at a school I had dreamed of for a few years and didn't believe I could ever get there and I saw the school here and the pretty weird people there. Then it was quite different there than it is today, needless to say. When I miss the business and stuff, I was sitting here at Honza Rous's seminar…
MK
Mr. Rous!
MR
and Petr Babák showed his throwing, drumming, etc. books there and I said to myself, my God , this is the smell, this is the best, experiment, is it real? It was like hearing a stupid joke and not wanting to laugh at you. Then new people started coming and I met, for example, David Fírek, Radim Pešek, Helena Šantava…
MK
Helena!
MR
then you and so on and so I started to feel that maybe it's not such a terrible job that it's not shit. But back to you, what kind of experience do you have from school and schools, how did you even get to what you do, to books and such?
MK
I don't remember much. But there are plenty of flashes. Maybe he'll find out. I know from my mother that my favorite childhood book (when I still couldn't read, maybe not even speak) was a Czech-German dictionary. I didn't want to read fairy tales. Either sleep straight away, or "clean up" to flip through a few pages of the dictionary. Then I remember that I was looking for treasure, in a forbidden grove behind blocks of flats in Klášterec nad Ohří, I recorded everything in my diary… I kept my German chips packaging. He loved the catalog of English, not for the carts, but for the format and the dynamics of the whole catalog. He grew up with his sister (animator) in a small room, which was also Dad's studio, which paints a woman's body, especially her breasts, you feel Baroque and psychedelia there. Blood Colored Envelope Classmates - Pieces of honest design. Drawn paper theater for parties in nature schools. Together with a friend, they published (a typewriter with punches, 3-5 pieces) a bodybuilding magazine. He then distributed it for reading in class. I feel like for a fee, 50 pennies. They could even subscribe to it. In addition, they received a free set of hull posters, drawn by me. We are still in elementary school… There were also paintings, statuettes. But I didn't feel like studying art. Then take a moment in chemistry, mineralogy, technology, and quickly away, on promotional art. When I saw Solomon's Studio (Illustration and Graphics, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague) - I wanted to go there, I felt at home there, and just like you, boom, I succeeded. Suddenly you are on the other bank.
And I enjoyed it. All that paradise, circus, reformatory. Unforgettable people, experiences. Something came to life. Thanks.
MR
Hey, do you still have any of those things? I'd like to see you. It reminds me of my childhood love of commercial / western design, cola cans, Sony cassettes and timepieces like Pif and later Bravo, etc. Like everyone else back then. I also remember the ambivalent feeling that it is commercial , foreign and that I like it. I didn't color anything with blood at the time, even though I had enough of it as a strong eczematous at hand, but from the beginning I made a small comic book timer Superman and Mischel. Late only Mischel, how else. I remember that my Superman looked like a sperm with a black hood, and Mischel was such an immature Bart Simpson with short arms. It was full of stupid stories and, surprisingly, quite indoctrinated. One series was originally called "SS yuck" and after a few numbers already "USA yuck" and the story always the same, Hitler (then Reagan) flew somewhere with the soldiers and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic then ground them with rockets. Some fair fight was obviously fucking me, no fast arrows. It is also interesting that the artistic side of things was pretty bad and with the continuation, the "figures" became totally schematized and sloppy dolls.
Well, nothing back to that bastard, look, say something more about her. The years you have been there come to me quite interesting and happy. More originals came together in the vintage and studio and suddenly there was something to look forward to. Do you keep watching, watching what they do and don't do, and what about your Kopr Books project?
MK
Mischel, do you have it in the drawer? Please take it to Fra next time.
To illustrate, you're right, they met great and interesting. I like to see new things from them. Everyone was unusual, yet normal, and human, prchhh, those are the words. I experienced a change / exchange of students from Jiří Šalamoun to students of Juraj Horváth. The transformation of a well-established studio, which even classmates from other doors at the school mocked, into studios that are "counted on" in the world of the waking and sleeping. Juraj has a great credit that the illustration did not leave somewhere in the damp and cold corner of the shipwreck. She's here with us, Captain. Nevertheless, I would call the gentleman who can freeze everything and let it start here, at least for a while.
Dill was also worth it. Mixed from studios. Illustration, font, animated film. All personalities. Something has arisen. And then dill, each in his own way.
MR
You think I have it. I'll exchange. Martin, how do you actually work? When I see you somewhere or we meet, I can't even imagine it, but I would actually say that I quite like to see solo. Do you ever miss a team ? From your new stuff, I know the work for Lokál, the covers of A2 magazine, at the Arbor Vitae publishing house you are preparing such a double book for children to sleep in, and as far as I know, it's pretty big. Is there something you want to focus on, or do you take it as it goes? I would like to know your plan .
MK
I work anywhere, with minimal resources. I like it. Being in the fog. Fog on yourself or on assignment, on coworkers. Lightning is coming.
Cooperation. Yeah, mostly alone, like this: what's on the apier, on the wall, I can adjust everything. But I like to connect there as well, and the result is better. Like things we did together. I am grateful for the shooting of "clients". From "prince" work from the table, through physical education: painting a brown spiral in the morning, milling drawings in plexiglass on the outskirts of Prague, night painting of the ink and wine shop, then some time in the St. Agnes Monastery. There were a few trips outside too. I was recently invited to take part in a non-book project. I'm really looking forward to that. There is concentration now. But overall, I look, the book, that rules Kubat's life - such a plan. It can change.
MR
Few resources and at the same time the diversity of jobs, circuits and places, it seems typical to you, I enjoy it. It also seems to me that you always take away (and possibly avoid the assignment and sometimes the specified format and place, we know each other) and at the same time it is simply full and, most importantly, very personal. In fact, you rewrite the assignment itself quite significantly. I finally see something, someone is talking to me. It's like playing a completely different game. This is unseen for me in the current visual communication, there is (for me) quite silence, too much of a mess, or, conversely, everything possible over myself, quotes of quotes and no one knows why. Which is weird. Well, nothing, women at the end.
Out of my love for you and your things, I confessed here, I would just like to see you in other publishers than Fra, Arbor Vitae or A2. Paper and pages fit you terribly. I wonder what will happen.
Hey, is there anything I forgot to ask?
MK
As you say, it sits, I guess so, but yeah, maybe yeah, it sounds good…
And thanks, there will be new things, but it's still too early to write about them.
Thanks for everything, Michael. You pulled me and my books out from under the table. He gave me opportunities, confidence. You're my patron, man. I love you so much, even your moves. Head, body. Even that wolf. I want to meet you.
Element 39, 2018
