Spike Magazine

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Interview [published September 2003]
Peter Saville: Graphic Sex
Chris Hall meets legendary designer Peter Saville
“Peter Saville drives a Skoda”. The appalling idea
scared him off of renting one when it was offered in
place of the VW Polo that he’d ordered. “I know everyone
says they’re really good cars now, but I’m not
gonna be in a test group for them. It’s still a Skoda,”
he says, terrified that people would think he drove one.
Instead, Saville pulls up at his studios near Old Street,
East London in a rented Fiat Stilo, The Doors still playing
on the stereo. His own car, a 16-year-old BMW 3
Series, is in the garage and he hasn’t quite got used to
the replacement, checking and double-checking that
he’s properly locked it. He’s worried about how much
the repair bill is going to be when he collects the BMW.
In fact, he’s worried about bills full stop.
He has a big tax bill to pay this month, which he
says he can’t afford. The bailiffs have been round, who
he fended off by lying to them, and the phones have
been cut off. Plus his own financial involvement in
The Peter Saville Show which opened in May at the
Design Museum in London, and a book published by
Frieze, has meant that he’s on the verge of personal
bankruptcy. Oh, and he’s just about to be kicked out of
BUY Peter Saville books online from and
the house he’s been staying at in West London for the
past two years and might have to move in to his studio
which hasn’t got a toilet. Or blinds. Or a bed.
You wouldn’t think that this was the same Peter
Saville who’s designed some of the most original and
iconic album covers ever with Joy Division, New
Order, Suede and Pulp; who’s worked for Christian
Dior, Givenchy, the Pompidou Centre, EMI and
Selfridges, among many, many others; whose seminal
work for fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto has
influenced a decade of “anti-advertising” advertising,
and who’s been recently voted the “most admired
individual working within the creative industries”
in Creative Review. The Peter Saville who’s been
quietly amassing an impressive body of work as a
graphic artist over the last 25 years, who at the age of
47 is being officially recognised by the mainstream.
It’s the weekend, which means he’s working, and
he’s arranged to do some quick picture editing with
one of his colleagues, Sascha Behrendt, just before he
meets me. But he’s running late, so they have to look
at the prints of a shoot he did a few days earlier for
422
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