FUEL’s profitable passion for tattoos, Joy Division and Lost in Translation.
Design isn’t as simple as it used to be. Technology, an increasingly complex commercial marketplace, and changing corporate demands are forcing designers to contemplate broadening their business.
In the same east London side-street that is home to Gilbert and George, two men and their Macs have adapted the skills they learned at college to launch a critically acclaimed, commercially viable book publishing imprint which has inspired the likes of David Cronenberg.
Founded in 1991 by Stephen Sorrell, Damon Murray and Peter Miles (who left in 2004), graphic design group FUEL formed FUEL Publishing in 2005. It is now home to an eclectic list of titles that look destined to achieve enduring cult status. But being hailed within design-led industries is not enough: can FUEL also take its unique style to a wider audience without selling out?
FUEL’s pedigree is not in doubt. While students at the Royal College of Art, Sorrell, Murray and Miles launched their own magazine, also called FUEL. The FUEL design group has since won eye-catching commissions for the biggest names in art, fashion and music, including Diesel, Marc Jacobs, Sony and the Chapman brothers. Their influence has spread to the silver screen: FUEL produced the opening credits for Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and Nick Cave’s Australian western The Proposition. Sorrell concedes that this enviable roster of clients has granted him and Murray the freedom to do what they like best: “People who approach us know our work and know what to expect. We’ve always worked with people who appreciate what we do.”
Companies cannot live by creative daring alone, though, and the pair know they must strike a commercial balance. “It’s definitely 50-50,” says Sorrell. “You have to have creative and commercial success if you’re going to survive, though we haven’t particularly chased the money.” Murray adds: “We’ve never had a long-term plan – we’ve never sat down and said, ‘in five years’ time, we’re going to be doing this and this’. We’ve always taken it project by project and tried to push it as far as we can.”
We always try to imbue our books with something extra which makes them into beautiful objects Damon Murray, FUEL
FUEL Publishing specialises in beautifully crafted books that mine the more obscure corners of popular culture. (Their diverse list of influences includes Bauhaus, Russia, Raymond Chandler, Spike Milligan, concrete, Polaroids and Peter Blake.) Recent feted tomes include Juvenes, a collection of Kevin Cummins’ Joy Division photos, and Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, whose two volumes were used extensively by Cronenberg for Eastern Promises, a visceral take on the gangster movie focusing on Russian mobsters in London.
Moving into editorial was a risk for Sorrell and Murray but, after years of designing books for clients, they felt emboldened to have a go. As Sorrell explains: “Getting involved in the editorial side was quite an instinctive leap, because you’re still making decisions about what to leave in and what to add, much like when you’re designing a layout. So applying the same kind of art direction to the text isn’t a massive leap.”
“Choosing to publish books isn’t an easy way to make money,” says Sorrell, but FUEL believes the audience for its kind of titles can only grow. Murray says: “There’s always going to be a market for art in some form. People will always want to collect beautiful things, and we always try and imbue our books with something extra which makes them into beautiful objects, and that’s what makes people like them so much.”
For now, FUEL Publishing’s future includes the release of a further three books in 2008. The first is a lavish hardback volume exploring the theme of crime via interviews with writers, artists, victims and perpetrators. A text-driven title, this is something of a departure, but Sorrell and Murray acknowledge they can’t succeed if they just appeal to fellow designers. “It would be nice if our books sold well,” says Sorrell. “That’s the challenge, finding something that isn’t obviously a popular subject, and making it into something people really want.”
Article first published in Design Council Magazine, Issue 4, Summer 2008