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www.centralstationdesign.com

One of the creative driving forces coming out of Manchester (>p172) is the creative collective Central Station, comprised of Matt and Pat Carroll and Karen Jackson. The visual yin to the Happy Mondays audio yang, Central Station provided all the art, including record sleeves, stage sets, music videos, to the movement. And their art is fucking amazing. When I had to swiftly make a business card in South Africa I was so inspired by their Black Grape ‘Carlos’ cover (see right) that I used the same police photo-fit image with the words ‘Graphical Terrorist’ scrawled underneath. I sat down with Matt, Pat, and Karen in Manchester on a sunny day in 2009.

‘We’ve been into making art since we were kids. There was eleven of us living in this tiny council house — it was chaos. Art became a way of entering our own world and space. We were influenced by all the shit that was around us, music, books, films, magazines and mad characters. A subliminal intake of the world, a subconscious collection of ideas. We were into things like drawing, type, and making marks — stuff that kids round our way were just not interested in.

‘Our front room was full of our brother’s massive record collection and we were fascinated by some of the sleeve art — it was amazing. We’d buy our own records and redesign the sleeves ourselves, or if we bought a single without a proper sleeve we’d make one. We’d spend hours copying images from Marvel comics. Drawing pictures and cartoons of pop stars and people off the telly.

‘Our Dad introduced us to magazines and books that we would never have looked at. It opened up a world that had a massive effect on us. Some of the visual images we discovered at that time — like when we read about the air disaster with the rugby team in the Andes in 1972-that fascinated us for 20 years. Reading about things like the Baader-Meinhof gang, terrorist movements, stuff like that had a big impact on us and influenced our work — eventually. Being a kid in the 70s and early 80s, you have to remember that it was a fucking grim time — but we always had dreams and aspirations beyond our means, we always thought outside of what you’re supposed to. One of the most important things when you get older is to connect back to all those key moments. People forget that… A lot of people become adults and they fucking erase everythin’ they think is no longer important. We’ve always believed that’s the stuff you keep. When we set up Central Station our priority was to celebrate this idea. Growing up with the Mondays meant we shared the same mentality-we didn’t give a shit.

‘Factory records became an outlet for us all to infiltrate a commercial environment. Our art, images like Bummed and Carlos the Jackal were exhibited in high-street shop windows, people’s homes, and posters were plastered around the country. We were part of an underground movement, using the establishment to communicate to a wider audience.’