When Dan Whitford from Cut Copy isn't sweating the masses at the foot of the stage or throwing champagne bottles against the wall with Franz Ferdinand, he can be found at the end of a mouse and set square. That is, being exactly one half of the Melbourne based design duo ALTER.

And just like when Harry met Sally, where there's half there requires an equal. Enter one Jonathon Wallace. Cue successful design partnership that over the last 5 years, has taken on work for fashion stables, music labels and ... buildings with tables. Y'know like pizza restaurants and stuff. Here we speak to both of them about what they do and how. Go!

How would you describe your work?

That's always a difficult question, best left to the people who are looking at it. Similarly to writing or music — any creative pursuit, really — I'd rather not assign a description. What I would be happy to say is that we generally enjoy the doing bit, generally have a reason for at least some part of it and can easily present a rationale to a client. We try not to make the work incredibly serious and we attempt to not take ourselves entirely seriously either … one thing that life/education has taught me so far is that people who take themselves seriously are, more often than not, being foolish.

How do Dan and Jono work together? Tell us about the process?

That's easy. When Dan's not touring, playing shows, doing the DJ thing or doing radio/tv/magazines/various other media interviews or watching friends in other bands play or going to parties where friends are going, then we're working together on whatever jobs are with the studio at the time. This usually consists of “What do you think about this?”, “That's shit”, “Yeah, I know” … “What do you think about this?”, “That’s shit”, “Yeah, I know” … and so on.

Seriously, we've both got our strengths and they seem to generate interesting results when combined.

Do you follow the script when dealing with art surrounding music? (Lyrics, members, et al)

No, I'm really not someone that ever remembers the lyrics to songs, which probably explains why the lyrics to Cut Copy songs are so simple, and unfortunately why I'm so crap at karaoke. I often feel like the visual imagery that springs to mind when you're dealing with music isn't always as simple as following a narrative laid out in a song. A record cover has to work as a piece of art in its own right, as does a video clip, so I think that has to be the ultimate aim when you're dealing with art surrounding music — it needs to work on it's own above referencing song lyrics or themes in the music. That can often be a flaw when bands do their own artwork. You can be so focused on what's going on in the music, cramming all the symbolic imagery from the songs, that you forget that the artwork needs to look interesting.

On the flipside, some musicians do their own art and it looks amazing (eg: Beck, Cornelius, Zongamin) but they're probably exceptions rather than the rule. Thankfully, I've got people around me that aren't afraid to tell me when I'm losing the plot most of the time. It's probably happened on a number of occasions.

So at what point within a design do you know you've taken it too far (beyond friends asking if you're sure about the use of tweed)? When to go backwards, when to simply finish up?

I think it's one of the most difficult things to identify without a trusted second opinion or at the very least a good night's sleep and some fresh eyes. It's one of those things with design work where the first impression is usually the most telling and accurate as far as whether it's communicating or not. If you're deep in the creative process this objective perspective is something that you lose after a while. That's why you usually need someone else to tell you that what you're doing is shit. It's not usually something you'd admit to yourself, even if deep down you know it to be true.

The same could equally be said for song-writing, I think.

Do you think fashion influences art or music influences art and fashion, swap and repeat …

Chicken or the egg? Fashion can sometimes seem to lead, but maybe it never really does. It's so fickle and open to suggestion that anyone can play. I think fashion is generally a game of mimicry played out of deference to those who find themselves én vogue for whatever reason, blind stroke of fortune or plain bad luck.

What does Alter consider good art?

I think we're generally attracted to things that are outside of the "what's now", "what's cool" and "what's in style". This in itself is a cliché, but that's probably the best way I can describe our taste in 'art' as it relates to design. Although inevitably as a graphic designer you end up doing work that's following what's in fashion because that's what your client is after, we try to push all of our work into doing something a bit more interesting. For instance, we have a collection of 20+ year-old Vogue magazines out the back of our office which we go through from time to time and cut out bits for ideas. We used a lot of this stuff when we did the collaged clip for ‘Saturdays’. It's not so much a "retro" look that we find inspiring, but more the ideas that people had back in the day but never really caught on. Much the same as in music, some of the coolest trends and styles hit brick walls but could have evolved into something more interesting if given the chance.

I'd say that the art that we are often interested in is the ubiquitous pop culture reference material that surrounds us. Kind of cliché again, but that's life these days … unless you're somewhere in Outer Mongolia or the like.

You can't help but be overwhelmed with visuals nowadays, how hard is it to detach one’s self from them when working on a piece? I guess this goes back to crossing the line within a piece …

I guess this could be the inverse of the “you can't work in a vacuum” thing. You can try. Sometimes it's fun to work without identifying any particular relevant look or doing research to find possible reference and develop direction. It's like imposing ignorance on the process (as much as that is possible). It's impossible (at least for me) to completely start with a blank canvas; I'd have to be some kind of Buddhist master to achieve anything like that. But I do try to begin this way sometimes. It doesn't always yield good results, but it's interesting.

Probably a better approach is to accept that we live in a post-modern world saturated with imagery and references and just enjoy it, celebrate it, swim around in it for a while. In my mind there's nothing bad about being influenced by other artwork and ideas. It's probably just a bit boring if you're constantly following what everyone else is doing at any given moment. That's why we try to avoid it.

Can you tell us some people who are doing it right?

There are probably so many people we could mention as artists we look to for inspiration. Richard Prince is a good example because his approach has changed a number of times over his career but has always maintained an interesting subject matter. Much of his work is found or claimed from other sources (eg: his Marlboro man series and his more recent joke screen-prints). It's quite interesting to take something almost directly from pop culture but by isolating it and changing the context it becomes an engaging artwork. In contemporary Australian art Ricky Swallow is probably a similar example, in terms of referencing pop and art culture.

We also like a lot of the stuff that local designers like Tin&Ed and Pandarosa have done. Musically speaking there's so many we could mention; The Presets, The Midnight Juggernauts, Van She, Wolf and Cub, Wolfmother … the list goes on …

Can you tell me a bit about the Animals series Alter is working on?

‘Animals’ actually started just out of some kind of frustration with storm chasers. Storms are amazing, emotive and all that. But it's not a good reason to follow them around. Most of that garbage about 'scientific purposes' that storm chasers spout is of similarly questionable value to that which Japanese whalers bang on about. At least the storm chasers usually only endanger themselves. The point is that you don't see animals following storms around. They'll just end up doing weird unexpected shit that might look quite out of context once things have blown over. This might mean that they are, at times, smarter than we are.

I'm not sure how this project will evolve (or if it will), but it's basically something that is intended to create a kind of atmosphere. I might interpret the images in a particular way today, but I'm not sure that sharing that is useful. It's more fun to let people do that bit themselves. We're thinking about publishing it as a little book at the moment.

What are your thoughts on your Visual crowd vs your Musical crowd?

Graphic design is a much more anonymous profession than music really. Most people couldn't name three graphic designers whereas they could name over a hundred musicians. And the way design-related artwork is appreciated is quite detached from the process of making of it. So communicating with your 'audience' as far as visual art and design is concerned is difficult to quantify. After all there's no top 40 Billboard chart for visual art. Usually people might see our artwork on a wall or in a magazine and like it, but unless they know their stuff they're not necessarily going to know that we created it.

Whereas in music, live performance brings you out right in front of the people that you're connecting with and they can engage with it live. It's a lot more instant and powerful because of its immediacy, and obviously this is why music audiences are so much more familiar with the people that create it. The same thing wouldn't really work with design unless we started some sort of performance art/graphic design hybrid. I can't ever really imagine us selling tickets for people to watch us lay out a page of photos or change the spacing of text on the back of a business card. Maybe if we got dressed up in weird costumes and danced while we were doing it.

How do paycheques on either side of the fence compare?

The art paycheques follow a known or knowable structure and, well you don't get royalties and free shit from everyone. Music can sometimes pay quite well and you get more free shit but there's nothing consistent about income from music unless you write the soundtrack to a Revlon ad or something. I think probably a good 95% of musicians will reach a point where living off a diet of beer and cigarettes has lost its appeal and it's time to get a real job. Music has never seemed like a real job to me, but I think if it did, I would cease to find it interesting.

Designing around music is a fantastic way to get one’s art abroad, when abroad comes up to you are you Dan from Cut Copy or Alter?

There's no mystery to it really. I'm obviously both of those. You can't just pretend that you do one thing just because it takes a bit longer to explain to people. I'm passionate about both so from my perspective I'm happy to talk about whatever people want to talk to me about, be it music, art or something else.

What would you like to be remembered for? The music, the visuals, the place between?

Hopefully both would be memorable enough to rate a mention. I think if I were less ambitious with either of these, I would have given the other up a long time ago. A bit of both would be cool. It'd just be nice to leave a little footnote that says you don't have to be entirely about business. Hopefully. Maybe.

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