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Interview by Bim Ricketson
To find the Sopp Collective you should probably meet at the dry cleaners on King Street in Newtown, Sydney. Turn down the alley, knock on the mauve door and follow the dark stairwell upstairs to the rickety floor-boarded studio. Accept a beer from one of the European-sounding hosts and take a breezy seat by the window with the soothing car tones of Newtown below. Admiring the Mum tune playing and kids' drawings on the walls, you will notice that all the iCube Macs are cantered together on a large web of trestles in the centre of the room. You might get the feeling this would be a great place to work - a bunch of friends designing cool stuff together.
Sopp Collective was formed in 1999 by Katja Hartung and Thorsten Kulp from Germany, Nelson Alves from Portugal/Germany and Käre Martens from Norway. Lured to Australia by an interesting sounding design college, a friendship soon formed.
'We all met at design college and I think the reason we all clicked together so well in the beginning was a common sense of frustration in the way our college was driven,' begins Katja. 'The college and the college environment was, to say the least, not what we had anticipated...There was such a lack of passion and interest from fellow students and such a narrow-minded attitude from many of our teachers that we kind of decided to get together as a group and help each other out. On top of this we obviously shared a very strong friendship and we always hung out together so I guess it was the natural thing to do design together as well.'
And so Sopp was born - initially without a name or studio, just a common goal to do work which 'feels good, works well and looks great'. This simple philosophy of creativity over commerciality gives Sopp the opportunity to work on interesting - if not always well-paid - design briefs.
'Most of our "clients" are not of the wealthiest multinationals of this world so we don't really ask for the big bucks,' explains Thorsten. 'The compromise for them is that we demand tight control of and freedom over the project. Of course we wouldn't mind having a super good client that paid well and gave absolute freedom, but those clients don't grow on trees these days.
'Our main criteria is finding out, before we say yes to something, if the project will be of any benefit for us. Not financially, of course, but if it's going to be interesting to work on, if we'll learn some new things. And most importantly if it's going to be fun. We're always keen to work on interesting projects with interesting people, artists and musicians.'
Amongst their client list of established companies like home, King Island Cheese and Rossi Boots you find Ugress, a Norwegian electropop band, the Moving Through Air drum and bass nights and Tepid. Works include websites, annual reports, a pixel based film clip and custom fonts. All with a trademark lushness, simplicity and uncluttered aesthetic.
Cyclic Defrost readers - in Sydney at least - would probably be most familiar with Sopp's work for the monthly drum and bass club Moving Through Air. The flyers, ads and posters have been adorning Sydney streets for the last year, and if you've been to the gigs you would have seen the specially crafted visuals. Moving Through Air's absence of a traditional brief has freed Sopp to experiment with ideas of which a well paying corporate client wouldn't necessarily approve.
'There has never been a brief as such for this event which is, of course, the way we like it! It means that on a regular basis we have a white space to play with, on which we can get some designs down that we like, get it printed and distributed all over Sydney. Only one person in Sopp designs the flyer for the event but we rotate who's doing it so we all get a fair share of the pie.
'We also do the visuals for the night. We have tons of animations, illustrations, films and some live sound-feed stuff that we have compiled in a Director shell so we just press buttons on the keyboard to bring them up on screen. We try to do new things for each event but it's always dependent on how busy we are with other things.'
If you're a designer and wondering how to land such a sweet job, take consolation in the fact that the old rules still apply - it's who you know. 'Moving Through Air is run by Ben Marshall and Craig Shuard. Ben was a flatmate of Nelson and Käre's for a few years and Ben was very keen on us doing the Moving Through Air stuff all along.'
Moving Through Air is probably the best example of the Sopp's rotating design policy. 'As with any group of people we all have our different strong and weak sides. But the point of having a collective is that each person brings to the table what he or she thinks is a worthwhile contribution to the group and to the project. Our group of people is quite strange compared to a normal design firm. Since we're all designers at Sopp Collective everyone wants to get as much of the design bit of the project as possible, whereas at a design firm they would probably have a project manager, copywriter, art director and so on. Our projects are a bit more flexible as to who does what within a project.'
Each member's individual style is reflected in the designers they admire and their own design philosophy. 'I think we all have somewhat different approaches to design which is good, of course,' says Käre. 'Personally I think it's more a method of doing things rather than having a philosophy.
'I tend to try to apply a method of simplicity and trying to say some accurate things without using too many design elements. What I leave out of a design is just as important as what I put in. But that does not mean I only like neo-modernist design because that would be ignoring many other more expressive forms of communication. I think most designers have a core way of doing things; but one should not follow this all the time. Sometimes a solution to a project demands something more or different to this so, in my opinion, as a designer one always has to be open minded to try new things and not be a slave to one's own restrictions. But being appropriate and unselfish can also save you a lot of trouble for yourself and others sometimes.'
'A good concept carries the graphic and the work,' adds Nelson. 'I do things on paper and try to work on concepts and ideas rather than trying to make something work on the surface. Apart from this I try to do what comes out of me; feels good, works well and looks great.'
'Philosophy is a pretty strong word,' says Katja. 'Uniqueness, strong and clever concepts and visual flow are always on my wish list when I start a project...but they can be quite tough to achieve.'
'I believe your design philosophy evolves and changes with you and the different stages in your life,' says Thorsten, 'Its a kind of a continuing progress, which for me personally hasn't ended yet. Probably like every designer, I try to come up with an innovative and original idea and focus on the concept rather than just style and good looks. I think the four of us like working with each other because we all take this similar approach concerning our "design philosophy."'
With a uniformity of quality rather than style, it's no wonder the members site varying inspirations for their design. 'Presently it would probably be Kim Hiortøy from Norway,' says Käre. 'He applies his subtle designs to the record covers of Norwegian label Rune Grammofon. Another one is a middle aged Danish theatre director called Gitte Kath who designs her own posters for the theatre she works at in a very organic and tactile way, only using her own found objects. I don't think she even uses a computer in the process. Mark Farrow is another hero and so are North, Intro and Blue Source. They all have a similar approach. And I've always admired the very thoughtful and intellectual approaches of Fuel and Tomato. Peter Saville does very emotional work and I love the work Designers Republic do for Warp Records, especially for Autechre.
'In the past, even though they're not very old yet, I've admired and still admire David Carson and Neville Brody's work. I think they've had a big effect on designers our age. Further back in time I guess people like Saul Bass, Pablo Ferro, Bruno Monguzzi, Joseph Mueller Brockmann and tons of others have had an effect on me for various reasons.'
'I always loved American design,' admits Nelson 'especially work coming from Cranbrook and California and the magazines émigré and Ray Gun, as well as the old Russian designers like Rodchenko. I've always loved the magazine Colors.
'My main inspiration always came from what goes on around me and my life, like my fellow students and friends, drinking beer, chatting about things, and getting hyped up about ideas and what is possible to do. Music, art galleries, street poles, notice boards, record stores, op-shops and King Street are always great sources to get me going.'
Katja adds, 'My big heroes back at uni were David Carson, Neville Brody, The Designers Republic, Tomato, Pablo Ferro, Brockmann, Chris Cunningham and the Attik. And from there the list grows...Scott Clum, Deanne Cheuk, Jennifer Sterling, Yoshimoto Nara...But even though all of their work really hit me in some way and I admire their design, it is not the biggest inspiration when I am doing work myself. I usually find real things that I find on the street, or in music, nature, art or 'unpolished' work more inspiring. Sometimes it triggers something that makes me think or helps me as a starting point for something completely different.'
Thorsten continues, 'I love Swiss graphics (Josef Müller-Brockmann for example) and minimalism. But as for inspiration, everything goes. Stuff I find on the streets or in op-shops, my grandma's attic, architecture, art, my friends, dreams, drawings done by Käre 's eight-year-old sister, etc. I stopped buying design magazines because everything looks the same and subconsciously, to a certain extent, you always use what you already have seen in there.'
The theme for this issue's cover is both obvious and perfect. Like the dusty old gem of a 45 that you find hidden at the back of a record shop, readers will no doubt find glee in "uncovering" a stack of what look like free old records. 'We all love sneaking around old second hand book stores to find old nice things,' explains Käre, 'so the inspiration for the cover was the piles of really old and dusty record covers that are sometimes to be found in these stores. We wanted to create a feeling of old worldliness in these very digital and unhuman times.'
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