Designers Republic and Nick Bax: concept design
Nick Bax’s Human studios provided essential support with the project getting off the ground and the sponsorship event. We used part of their initial design for the first phase website.
“I was born in Huddersfield but moved to Rotherham when I was 9. I always thought of it as a satellite of Sheffield if you like. I grew up in Rotherham and then I left Rotherham asap – you wanted to get away. When I started to come up to Sheffield on a regular basis whan I was 13/14 with my friends, it was like going to New York for the day.
I was too young for punk, I was about 6 when punk happened. The first thing I was into was Ska or Madness. But bands like Cabaret Voltaire I guess were my first contact. I had heard things about them and would read about them in the paper locally, but my first contact was when they appeared on things like the Max Headroom show. At the time on Tv there weren’t many Music shows so anything that was on that was music related we would watch religiously, things like The Tube to the Chart Show. I remember seeing them on Max Headroom with the Sensoria video and that was incredible.”
Nick moved to London to work before coming back up North to Sheffield in 1990 when the Sheffield Bleep movement was taking over from the Madchester sound. He joined Ian Anderson’s Designers Republic and later became a director of the company. His most well-known designs are the Pulp albums including His n Hers and Different Class, but he also designed album covers for Warp artist Aphex Twin and for various Britpop bands including Supergrass.