RACING INTO THE FUTURE

How Wipeout, one of the defining games of the original PlayStation era, found its identity

- DUNCAN HARRIS

Founded in 1986 by firebrand designer Ian Anderson, TDR – aka The Designers Republic – is a figurehead of the SoYo (as in South Yorkshire) movement, self-styled opponents of an older, supposedly stagnant design scene in London. Its style is one of Russian Constructivism bred with Asian logotypes and ’90s information overload – altogether dubbed ‘Nihonpop’ by fans. But in truth it is more varied, as shown by TDR’s work with electronic music label Warp Records. Much of its output is antiestablishment, littered with merry bastardisations of corporate brands and slogans. In 1995, Keith Hopwood, creative services manager at Psygnosis, was at its door.

“Ian was spiky,” Hopwood recalls. “I’m embarrassed to say I was completely in awe of him and what they stood for. He was a bit dismissive which meant I was a bit downbeat. But really it was all about damage control, because the worlds of advertising and games had no real connection; agencies had wanted to dabble, but the big names weren’t interested.” TDR’s big four were co-founders Anderson and Nick Philips, plus Michael Place and Nick Bax. Bax, an art and graphic design graduate, had joined in 1990, returning from London studio Mainartery, designing for clients such as Sony and EMI. “Gaming,” he remembers, “was geekier back then. I’m massively generalising, but people into dance music and designing cool things were not into Dungeons & Dragons and video games. A lot comes down to the enthusiasm of the Psygnosis team kind of stroking our egos.”

Key to those discussions, and indeed to Wipeout as a whole, was Psygnosis artist