Suzy Bell
IT’S based on the premise that the spirit of ubuntu meets advertising on a hot and heady Apple Macintosh keyboard with a manic mouse tripping on orange juice spiked with the wicked realism of raw design.
Seldom before has there been such a brilliant collaboration of skilled and raw talent as seen in the latest issue of i-jusi #3.
It has created a brand new visual order of design that does not jump to commands but is instead, in copywriter Lawrence Seftel’s words, “cutting a swathe through the primary colours and contours of landscapes as precious and surprising as memory, which appearing as a dusty toy beneath a beige armchair, and crying out from the newsreel voices of political heroism, searches the assembled throng of timeless faces and placards and posters and shopfronts and hairstyles and dog collars, and finds the almost madness and the not-quite-sanity of a brand new visual order”.
Studio Head for ML Sultan Technikon’s GD3 (graphic design) department, Dennis Purvis, said the whole idea was to take nave designs from first-year students and give them to professionals to see what they’d come up with – i-jusi # 3 is the result.
“What’s important is that we’re looking toward a new South African design aesthetic that doesn’t take its cues from Europe. I find that very exciting,” says Purvis.
As publishers of i-jusi, Orange Juice designers Garth Walker and Siobhan Gunning plead: “Throw away the Gti and the Diesel jeans for a moment and imagine you’re a squatter. You think Apple Mac is a fruit and you probably never did art at school, the few times you ever went to school.
“Now some top internationally recognised designer is using your simple first-ever linocut in one of his works.
“That designer has taken a little piece of Africa and turned it into something that cyberpunk would worship. It’s like Ray Gun meets Africa.”
This exhibition of graphic design by ML Sultan Technikon first-year GD students and a group of Design professionals which led to the publication of i-jusi # 3 is on at the NSA Gallery until November 14