Cameron Baird interview, cover designer issue 29

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It’s edging towards the end of winter as the inky blue sky above Sydney’s Camperdown ushers in that promising interim between dusk and evening proper. The colour almost perfectly brings to mind the imagery that Cameron Baird creates for a number of album and EP designs on The Frequency Lab imprint. Images of the cosmos spliced delicately with archival photos all seem to link back to this one colour that’s permeating the night sky, like a real-life recreation of one of his recent covers: Jonny Faith’s Blue Sky On Mars.

“I think I’m extremely interested in collage,” he says, as we sit down to chat in the corner of the warehouse space that houses his design consultancy Sensory Creative. “As a small boy I pretty much wallpapered my bedroom entirely with magazine scraps, the majority of them were women and sports stars, it was a bit of a hilarious sight at the time. That process of the found object being cut out and applied in a mash to an overall landscape is something I was extremely fond of doing at that age.”

Designs for releases like the Fictitious Seven series of “digital vinyl” (two tracks on either ‘side’ imitating the ethos of 7-inch singles) certainly seem to echo this neo-decoupage aesthetic that Baird favours so highly. The visual environment is made up of textures, photographic elements and typography all overlaid in response to the music contained within the sleeve. “A lot of the Fictitious Seven stuff has been very much based on the organic, the earth, the land… I think it’s trying to build on a theme but at the same time a lot of the music has dictated that that’s the design idea.”

This complementary relationship between the visuals and music can be traced back to Baird’s love affair with the saxophone, which he played for 12 years. “In a way jazz, which became such a thorough part to my practice, was a real genre of collage. It was a mix-match of learning different styles of that instrument, but it was also in itself quite varied in its execution.” This infatuation has slowly evolved into Baird’s ever-growing collection of CDs and digital releases that now name-checks artists on the Fat City, Stones Throw and !K7 labels (just to scratch the surface) and “everything you can nod to. Although over the last few years I have become more and more unhappy with certain styles of dance music which I think are generally quite bad on the ears.

“I have the pleasure of torturing all members of our studio space with my music, I pretty much dominate the library,” he says, his voice echoing around the now-empty room. It’s now clear as to how important being the music controller really is, given the expansive space before us. “I buy music every day of my life, pretty much, whether it be one of the many downloads that I find through any newsletters that I’m reading or monthly subscriptions of music that I have, and I’ve always wished I had more of a vehicle to play it.”

On top of designing, Baird also runs the SoundNotSeen arts and music blog with Huw Ellis, Rob Somatik and Thomas Studdy. It’s “a long overdue music dump” according to its about page, and acts as a vehicle for all involved to “bang heads” about their music loves. “My main interest at the moment is a bit hard to pigeonhole. I’m finding a lot of time for acts like Letherette, and that’s in a real fused kind of beat-scape, the latest EP is really flexible, lots of up and down tempos. That kind of instrumental hip-hop is really my flavour.”

Out of all the music-related design work, Baird’s relationship with The Frequency Lab seems to produce the output he’s most fond of. I ask how the collaboration began. “It’s a good memory to try and recount,” he says. “I first got to know Chris [Hancock, aka Monk Fly and label head] through Jonny Faith and through the Headroom project that the guys were working on. I had been working with Lorna [Clarkson] doing CDR and knew Lorna through graphic design work from her previous days at Floating Point. Lorna was a really good friend and she decided she was going to do more than just label work, she was going to do CDR and wanted me to be involved in that. I’m a big fan of the whole CDR process so I got involved from the branding all the way up but at the same time was such a music enthusiast that I loved the idea.

“Chris was involved in taking his music down to CDR and so too was Jonny, so they saw my stuff and got in touch and said ‘we’re going to be doing a Headroom gig, we want to know if you want to be on board’. I thought the music that those guys were pushing was really forward thinking. I was really passionate about the fact that it was quite eclectic and on a hip-hop tip, which is a bit of a pet love of mine. But to be brutally honest, just meeting the guys, they are extremely lovely guys, with good spirit and heart for showing people new music. It became pretty basic that I would be involved. I would much rather do it for the involvement than for the personal benefit, and that’s evident by the fact that those guys really run on a shoestring to get things done.

“What made it easier was that I enjoyed the music so much. I think what they were doing was really unique, pushing the boundaries, not necessarily calling everyone to a dancefloor, making everyone really have a think about what they were listening to and to be able to design for the music around that was a bit of a fun thing. I get an open brief for them too which is a real pleasure, it’s lovely to be trusted to do your job.”

Imbued within Baird’s work for Chris and Jonny is an overarching sense of nostalgia, which comes from using archival footage. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, from a visual and ideological standpoint, considering the music he is designing for is far from a throw-back to the near past. Future music, future beats, forward-thinking tunes, Baird explains, isn’t as separated from this vintage imagery as you might first think. “I’ve always been fond of just the style, colour and design of things like landscapes and the cosmos… it’s something that gives you a lot of fodder for texture and is something fun to work with. I also like to think that a huge part of all their musical sounds harks back to older sounds. There’s not one of those guys who’s not trying to find an old synth or an old filter that can be reworked into one of their tracks to try and create nostalgia of some form.

“It’s really interesting to know how you can play with different periods of time. It’s nice to know you can still run in cycles. In essence it’s a way to try and create something different to what’s currently too modern about other things.”

Apart from designing visuals for The Frequency Lab, Baird is also involved with creating tour work for Niche Productions, and has done artwork for Mad Racket and Future Classic events. There’s a definitely a difference between the commercial successes of Niche with, say, CDR, which Baird recognises. “Although I love the process dearly for the history that we’ve had and I respect how successful James [Browning] and Niche have been I do struggle with the fact that I’m limited to the chances and risks [they’re] prepared to take on my artwork.”

Commercial viability is something that clearly affects what appears on the page before us, on a tour poster or on the front of a physical release. But how do you know what will sell your tour or product in a design sense?

“It would be fair for me to say I’m not the greatest designer in the world, I mean, I often want to be better than I am and I think I often look at a lot of people out there and I see them as being truly great designers,” Baird offers. “Locally there are tons of really talented people doing similar, doing better work to me and I look at what they’re doing as being far more commercially viable because it’s just better.

“But I think the disappointing thing about Sydney perhaps is that I think far too much of what’s being produced is just the same. Yeah you’re inspired by what you digest out there but too many promoters are far too safe and too many people expect to see stuff they’ve already seen and therefore they’re not giving the designer any of that ‘you’re the designer’ creative freedom that you want.

“Chris was always really fond of me as a person which I think helps. Relationships are hugely important but at the same time, the boys came to be because they saw something that I did that they liked, and it was a job that I did that I liked. It would be great to see commercial viability bestowed to the designer because it’s something that they like, and I think there’s so much creative juice in Sydney where it should be let go of, it should be given its reigns to go. I have beat ups in this office space all the time over what looks good and what looks bad and whether or not a designer knows. But I think on average, a seasoned designer knows when something looks better and when something doesn’t… and then be trusted to take that direction and risk for the client. Commercially viable design work is sometimes extremely limited.”

Currently, Baird is taking inspiration from conceptual artist John Baldessari (who was most recently behind the Your Name In Lights project at this year’s Sydney Festival) and modern collage artists such as Mario Wagner, Hugo & Marie, La Boca and Red Design who are heavily graphic in their method of splicing images, text and the found object. The mixed media aspect is particularly appealing for him, and for this issue’s cover reflects that in many ways. “I guess I’ve been extremely fond of archive libraries… and the shapes and the lines that appear within that and building that into an almost tongue-in-cheek landscape where individuals either change their identity, cut their head off, or I give them a new position. This one was a computer company’s archive library that I pulled apart and wanted to generate it in a way that at least referenced cycles, hence Cyclic, but it was more in the way that there was a symmetry to the design and there was an industry parallel with music and there were gadgets, knobs, sounds, general play involved with individuals that were from this found library.”

Cameron Baird is a director of Sensory Creative. His portfolio can be viewed at www.cambaird.com or www.sensorycreative.com.au

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1 Comment

  1. Big up the brother Cam. A true gentleman and connoisseur of all things music and design. 

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