About.
Behind the Scenes.
A conversation with Richard Smith, host of Destroy! Dec 1st, 2024.
“For a long time, I’ve held this belief that the world we live in today, culturally, is a direct consequence of a brief moment in English television history: the ‘Bill Grundy incident’.”
DESTROY!: How did you come up with the idea for the show? You mentioned to me it started one day in New York, 2008, you were in a deli in Hell’s Kitchen, and you had this thought: “Design is everywhere.” What sparked that idea?
RICHARD SMITH: I was standing in line, waiting to order, and suddenly I thought, “How did we get here?”
Growing up, design wasn’t something anyone talked about. It wasn’t mainstream. And yet here we were, design was everywhere, completely unavoidable, this massive part of everyday life.
Companies like Apple and Target had turned it into a commodity. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That question, how did we get here, became an obsession.
D!: That obsession led you on a journey. What was the starting point?
RS: A couple of things happened almost at the same time. First, I had this epiphany in the deli. Then, a day or so later, I got a call from Peter Saville, my mentor and former boss. We started talking about why design was so prevalent, and he told me this incredible story.
Jony Ive, the Apple design guru, had once told Peter that his work on New Order’s “Blue Monday” sleeve was a major influence on him, on his creative philosophy.
“Growing up, design wasn’t something anyone talked about. It wasn’t mainstream. And yet here we were, design was everywhere, completely unavoidable, this massive part of everyday life.”
A few years later, Jony Ive also admitted that even the Neue Helvetica font he introduced in Apple’s iOS interface had also been inspired by much of Peter’s work. It just blew my mind.
D!: What did you take away from that original conversation with Saville?
RS: It was a turning point. From Peter’s record sleeves to Jony Ive’s designs for Apple, that link felt like a missing piece of the puzzle. It was evidence that the designers I’d grown up idolizing weren’t just part of the story, they were the foundation. It made me want to dig deeper, to figure out how this all started.
D!: You initially set out to write a book, right? Why did that idea shift to a podcast?
RS: Yes, the original idea was a book about the history of design, starting in the early 1970s. I wanted to trace it all back to the record sleeve designers of that era, people like Malcolm Garrett, Neville Brody, Peter Saville.
To me, they were the pioneers of modern design. But I’d never written a book before and didn’t know where to begin. What I did know was how to talk to people. So I started calling designers, just to hear their stories, one conversation after another.
Several years later I came back to the same idea and realized that a podcast was the right format. It’s a complicated story, that includes artists and designers, photographers, directors, and musicians, and I realized it would be easier to piece this web of creativity together one story at a time.
“The original idea was a book about the history of design, starting in the early 1970s. I wanted to trace it all back to the record sleeve designers of that era, people like Malcolm Garrett, Neville Brody, Peter Saville.”
D!: You’ve mentioned Alex McDowell’s story as a key moment in your research. What made his journey stand out?
RS: Alex’s story is like the perfect blueprint for everything I was trying to figure out. In 1975, he staged one of the first Sex Pistols concerts at the Central School of Art.
From there, he became their photographer, worked with Vivienne Westwood at Seditionaries, and started designing record sleeves.
That led him to music videos, then to LA and MTV, where he connected with David Fincher and worked on films like Fincher’s Fight Club and Minority Report with Spielberg.
Now he’s doing narrative design and world-building. His career just encapsulates this idea that the punk movement wasn’t just about music, it was about creativity breaking into every corner of culture.
“McLaren saw punk as a way to provoke and manipulate the media, while Westwood’s fashion questioned authority and societal norms. Together, they created this aesthetic and attitude that resonated far beyond music. They made rebellion tangible.”
D!: You’ve called the 1970s music and counterculture scene the backdrop for everything we’re seeing today. Why is that?
RS: The 1970s were a pressure cooker. England was in economic turmoil – strikes, unemployment, social unrest – and young people were rejecting everything. The music scene became the outlet for that energy.
In America, you had the New York Dolls and the Ramones ripping apart rock and roll conventions. In the UK, you had people like David Bowie who flaunted with sexual ambivalence, and people like Brian Eno, who was rewriting the rules of how music was made. Then there was Kraftwerk, who invented the future.
All of that chaos and creativity coalesced in punk, and at the heart of it were Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Their shop, Sex, was more than a boutique, it was ground zero for a movement.
McLaren saw punk as a way to provoke and manipulate the media, while Westwood’s fashion questioned authority and societal norms. Together, they created this aesthetic and attitude that resonated far beyond music. They made rebellion tangible.
“The Sex Pistols show up on The Bill Grundy Show, and it’s this live, national TV disaster.
They swore, Grundy provoked them, and the whole thing descended into madness. The next day, the Daily Mirror ran the headline ‘The Filth and the Fury,’ and the public lost their minds.”
D!: Let’s talk about the Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy Show, December 1st, 1976. You’ve called this the cultural spark that set everything in motion. Why?
RS: Because it was pure chaos. England in 1976 was a mess, unemployment was high, the country was on strike, and the youth were rejecting everything their parents believed in. Then the Sex Pistols show up on The Bill Grundy Show, and it’s this live, national TV disaster.
They swore, Grundy provoked them, and the whole thing descended into madness. The next day, the Daily Mirror ran the headline “The Filth and the Fury,” and the public lost their minds.
TVs were smashed. It was like a bomb went off in British culture. That moment legitimized rebellion. It was a shockwave that echoed through youth culture, music, art, and design.
“What started as rebellion and disruption ended up becoming a strategy to sell more stuff.”
D!: How does that moment connect to design becoming mainstream?
RS: It was the catalyst. That moment legitimized rebellion as a cultural force. Punk wasn’t just about music; it was about an attitude, and breaking the rules.
Designers like Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett, and Neville Brody were inspired by that energy, and they translated it into their work. Fast-forward a couple of decades, and those ideas filtered into everything. Even corporations like Apple and Target started using design as a way to stand out and provoke.
D!: Target, Apple, these are big symbols in your story. What do they represent?
RS: They represent the commoditization of design. Target was selling toilet brushes designed by renowned architect Michael Graves. Something no one had seen before. It was like, “Design is for everyone now.”
And Apple, with Jony Ive’s minimalist approach, made design aspirational. But there’s a weird irony to it. What started as rebellion and disruption ended up becoming a strategy to sell more stuff.
“Anton Corbijn brought the era to life visually through his photography and music videos. His work with Depeche Mode, U2, and Nirvana shaped how we see those bands, literally. He didn’t just capture moments, he created mythologies.”
D!: The guests you’ve interviewed for Destroy!: Peter Care, Peter Saville, Anton Corbijn, and Stephen Mallinder. Why are they important to your story?
RS: Each of them is a giant in their way. Peter Saville, of course, defined the look of post-punk and New Wave with his record sleeves for Factory Records. His work for Joy Division and New Order set a design standard that’s still referenced today.
Anton Corbijn brought that same era to life visually through his photography and music videos. His work with Depeche Mode, U2, and Nirvana shaped how we see those bands, literally. He didn’t just capture moments, he created mythologies.
Peter Care directed groundbreaking music videos for artists like R.E.M. and Cabaret Voltaire. He understood the visual power of music in a way that was ahead of his time.
Stephen Mallinder, as a founding member of Cabaret Voltaire, helped pioneer industrial music. That band didn’t just push boundaries, they erased them. His perspective on merging sound and technology is invaluable when talking about how design and music intersect.
All of them were part of this massive cultural shift where music, visuals, and design became inseparable.
“The rebellion that punk represented has been commoditized. Apple, Target, all these corporations, they’ve turned design into a product. It’s no longer about breaking the rules; it’s about selling them.”
D!: You’ve talked a lot about punk, rebellion, and breaking norms. How does that connect to the world we’re living in now?
RS: It’s all connected. Punk was about rejecting the status quo, about saying, “We’re going to do things differently.” That spirit bled into design, fashion, and technology. It laid the groundwork for what we see today, this idea that creativity can disrupt industries.
But there’s a flip side to that. The rebellion that punk represented has been commoditized. Apple, Target, all these corporations, they’ve turned design into a product. It’s no longer about breaking the rules; it’s about selling them.
D!: If Destroy! had one central message, what would it be?
RS: It’s this: the world we live in, this hyper-designed, highly visual world, was shaped by rebellion. But there’s a tension between creativity as a force for change and creativity as a commodity. That’s the story I’m trying to tell.
D!: Why the name Destroy!?
RS: Because that’s where it starts. To create something new, you have to destroy what came before. That’s what punk did. That’s what design does. It’s as simple as that.
Richard Smith was in conversation with Vincent Kettering, a freelance journalist, artist and currency collector who lives and works near Guildford, Surrey, England.