“Their work was a feeling, not an instruction”: A visual history of tomato, the era-defining collective of the 1990s

D’Arblay Street: The Studio

Simon Taylor: There was a party in an empty part of the building, I got talking to people there and suddenly we were tenants. That was in the summer of 1991, about three months after we initially set up as a studio. D’Arblay Street itself is in the heart of Soho. It attracted a lot of characters.

Steve Baker: Fortunately, there was a recession going on so “To Let” signs were like confetti in Soho. Unfortunately, there was a recession going on. The advertising business was frozen and record companies were slashing budgets so we couldn’t afford what we needed. D’Arblay Street was handily located and more than we could afford, so we sublet a couple of rooms and moved in.

Simon Taylor: Our space was at number 26. Three rooms on the top floor, one turned into a sound studio. It was charming and scruffy. On opening the door, you walked right into the middle of the work space – no reception or anything like that.

Graham Wood: It was the top floor of a 1930s workshop type building, pretty much unchanged except for paint I think. It was fairly rough, but not uncomfortable. By the entry was a small sink, one smaller room off the other, a bigger studio space which we used for admin, and a very small room of the studio was a kind of quiet space (which was rare). Next door, a smaller self-contained room became a music studio. The windows were the full width of the studio, where you could look out onto D’Arblay Street.

Michael Horsham: It had been a workshop of some sort. Crittal windows. It was decidedly shabby. But there were computers and a fax machine. Decks? Can’t be sure. But there was music. And a little music studio in the room next door. The tables looked like Foster Nomos with black tops. A mixture of chairs. Nothing too studied, some books and plan chests… It was a working space, but also a great place to hang. You never knew who would show up.

Dylan Kendle: A beaten up Chesterfield served as both a meeting room to the great and good, and a late shift crash pad. On top of plan chests, a thermal fax machine constantly buzzed with agency briefs, or in copy function generating oversized artwork to be loosely reassembled and sent out to Orange or UDO for dyeline runouts. Crittal windows, cracked by wayward BB pellets framed each end, and the south side overlooked a sunny, quiet, cobbled courtyard, just north of the 24-hour hustle of W1.

Simon Taylor: There was usually someone there day and night, making something. A lot of optimism and possibility around there.

John Warwicker: Yes, it was crammed when we were all in there, but that was more than made up for by the location. At the time the streets were full and active with a feeling that “something was in the air”. There was a lot of energy around, full of characters.

Dirk van Dooren: There was a green Chesterfield sofa and three or four plan chests, as a lot of the things we made were not entirely digital. Many rolls of blueprints, stuck together fax printouts. Storage was always an issue.

Dylan Kendle: Across the road The George – one of the smaller pubs in town – was where all the creatives and clubbers met, affectionately known as “meeting room three”. In a pre-mobile world its public phone in the bar would ring to round up errant designers as the US woke up and demanded London’s service.

Graham Wood: At that time, D’Arblay Street seemed to be a little bit of a meeting place, both in terms of people who worked on the street and others popping over to say hello. Below us was a film production and editing company, and on the ground floor the first (after Ladbroke Grove) Soho Duffer St George. Next door was Black Market Records, an amazing dance music place, and on the other side, Mark Powell (tailor to the stars!) had his studio. Down the street, there was Fish hairdressers which was the spot to get a haircut, and on the corner of D’Arblay and Wardour Street was (and still is) The George pub, which holds many, many arcane stories and unrepeatable secrets. I loved D’Arblay Street.

John Warwicker: We instantly felt at home rather than just occupying a neutral space. This was partly due to having Black Market Records below, at the street level of our building. We noticed that every Friday a van would pull up and a vast amount of boxes were taken into the store. Curiosity piqued, and we found a store full of 12” singles from the evolving club scene, energised by not only the music but the quick turn over (by Saturday afternoon the shelves were bare). Something was happening, that was “underground”, and it was full of energy. At the same time, Rick and Karl were also exploring this “new scene” and the first Underworld single – a 12 inch, Mother Earth – was released on our own label, Tomato, and found its way to the shelves below.

Dirk van Dooren: Record decks, speakers, music of every conceivable type was playing most of the day… A door buzzer which rang every four minutes, which I sat closest to…

Graham Wood: We were in that space for about five years. This first studio was a great spot… We certainly felt part of something, not only amongst ourselves but in a wider context. Stepping out onto the street was a vibrant, engaging experience. There were lots of people making things, sharing, thinking and talking. The George was a bit of a hub for that; photographers, musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers, artists, all overlapping, all at that point of optimistic energy and filled with possibility. You couldn’t help but be inspired by that.

The influence of the 1990s cultural scene on tomato’s design practice

Simon Taylor: We were engaged in after-hours culture. Music and nightlife was a huge part of that. A lot of our friends lived and worked in the club scene and wanted our help. It became a place to show up and show things. I remember tomato’s Graham Wood one night in Gossips nightclub, dressed in a baby blue nightie playing a huge marching drum on stage. Another memory is of helping Rick unload boxes of Underworld’s latest 12” out of the back of his car and into Black Market records, straight from the pressing plant. These are little things, but connected us to the ebb and flow of the time.

John Warwicker: Music played a central role in all of our work. It’s about composition as well as tone, timbre and evocation. Everything is “time-based” media, it’s all experiential.

Dirk van Dooren: Music has always been a big part of my life. It seemed to make everything better. Early on, it saved me from the very restrictive and largely dull family life. It allowed me to travel in my head whilst not being able to physically move.

At tomato, every single day one could listen to the musical tastes of seven different people. Sometimes this was overwhelming, sometimes wonderful.

Balancing creative experimentation with client work

Michael Horsham: The phone would ring or the fax would judder into action. Anyone would answer. If it sounded interesting the conversation would develop. In retrospect, there was a conscious and unconscious desire to make a space that didn’t work like others, that allowed for a certain freedom. We had no one telling us what to do – if we didn’t want to work on something it was fine. No boss. A flat hierarchy that was always changing.

Steve Baker: It was often self-selecting. Because of the structure of the company, none of the creatives were employed and could be “given” jobs. They always selected their own work, based on their own criteria. Clients would be told that right from the start. We’d receive a brief and see who was interested, then take it from there. If a client didn’t understand this, and wanted us to provide company brochures, then we’d just say we didn’t have one.

Jason Kedgley: In the early days, everyone had people approach them individually and more often than not they would open it up to evolve into something more. I’m not sure the clients had a clue what was going on, but they enjoyed the energy and positivity the studio gave out.

Graham Wood: We were fortunate in that we did have a lot of projects that were, for varying reasons, open and fairly freeform. That meant we could get a good representation of what we could really do out into the world, in what felt like a pretty unmediated way. On the other end of the scale, was work that was about that “can we have some of that tomato stuff please?” You’d always try and do something different in those circumstances, but it might not go as well as it could. To say the least.

Dirk van Dooren: Eventually, when things began to take off, we created a loose business structure. It was based party on the principles of John Lewis (the department store) and partly on the least hierarchical structures we could think of that could legally exist. Our business manager, Steve Baker, helped create a loose enough structure. He’d managed bands and solo artists in the music industry, so he applied similar principles.

John Warwicker: I think many clients couldn’t qualify, in conventional terms, why they approached us, beyond a sense, rightly or wrongly, that we represented the zeitgeist of that time. Others, I think, were interested in seeing what would happen. And yes, some “got it”.

Steve Baker: There was one moment at the end of the first year when John and I flew back from Eindhoven after a meeting with the head of worldwide marketing for Phillips. By the time we landed, we’d come up with an idea for a marketing campaign that, if it had been adopted, would have preceded Apple’s iPod campaign by about ten years, and allowed Phillips to claim a leading role in digital consumer products. The board didn’t get it, although the head of marketing loved it. They awarded us a point of sale campaign in compensation and the fee from that kept us going for the next quarter.

Michael Horsham: Quite often it seemed potential clients would claim they wanted what tomato did, expecting something to come out that looked or felt like something that had been made for someone else. If the response was new, which it always was, some clients would not like that result. They wanted a tomato style and of course, from our perspective, there was never really a style (though individuals had their own approaches), just ways of working together and against each other. Different results emerged.

Dylan Kendle: In some ways I think the opacity of the process made it more exciting at a time when even advertising could be experimental. Externally, everything was collective rather than individually labelled, so new clients often didn’t know who, or what they were getting. I guess the results and the portfolio were proof enough, the enigma and the buzz surrounding the studio afforded us freedom and space to play in traditionally quite staid and structured establishments.

How to build a collective future creative industry

Steve Baker: Keep your overheads as low as possible and keep the percentage of fees that the creatives get as high as possible. This gives the creatives the freedom to choose jobs where they can do their best work, which will enhance your portfolio and showreel, and that attracts better opportunities. Also, give the creatives who contribute to the company a percentage of it. This has two main benefits: when they work for very little (or nothing in the case of work on spec), but make great work, that contributes to their own company. Also, if they own a part of the growing reputation they hold some ownership of the original work, rather than just being paid to supply work that they have no residual ownership of – because that way drains the soul.

Michael Horsham: What is lacking is the culture of ideas and the idea that you should break the mould, use the analogue, do what you do with love, hone your craft. Some students still survive art school and they tend to be the ones who go on to do interesting things. But, rising student numbers don’t help, and neither does the idea that you don’t have your own studio space to leave stuff up, explore and make a mess! Potential employers I spoke to wanted engaged, surprising work and people, not 60 people a year who’ve all been taught the same methods, vocabulary and ideas.

Part of the problem we have at the root is the idea of employability. Some universities attract their students with the idea of employability – then you get a bit of a cookie-cutter mentality, bolstered by the (depending on the context) bogus ideas of attainment and grading. Students paying through the nose really don’t want C and D grades, as they feel they are failing rather than being shown the headroom they have to improve. On the other hand, the technicalities of design through computers (computers are tools) needs to be taught.

John Warwicker: I tell my students (I’m a professor at the Victorian College of Arts at the University of Melbourne) these two things: Be interested. Because if you are interested you will become interesting. If you then become interesting, then someone, somewhere in the world (who you might never meet), will be interested in you.

Secondly, the only thing you are designing is yourself. The rest is pure commodification. You are the medium, you are the agent. Work fast, to the point of the work making itself and you are trying to catch it. Walk slow, it’s your life’s commitment to yourself (circling back to being interested).

Simon Taylor: If you’re making a group, trust the group and each other. Make good work!

Michael Horsham: Give it a go. It probably won’t work.

Dirk van Dooren: I hope people gain some strength and encouragement to do their own thing, and not fall to the whims of the fools in charge.

Jason Kedgley: Perhaps the hope is that conversation and an open approach can take you to places you would have never thought of going.

Graham Wood: Try and find out what a true collective is and what that means; give trust and support; don’t let the petty things eat away at relationships; don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good; agree money stuff as a first principal, but be flexible as time goes on; see the world as interrelated, not competing; but also, know the enemy.