Swiss Grit: A Conversation with Chris Ashworth

For Chris Ashworth, design has never been about playing it safe. From his time as art director at Ray Gun Magazine, to shaping global brands like Getty Images, Nokia, and Microsoft, Ashworth has consistently challenged conventions of typography, structure, and form, while carving out his own visual language that refuses convention. Its called Swiss Grit: a charged collision between the discipline of Swiss modernism and the weathered, living textures of the street. It’s a philosophy rooted in contrast: order and erosion, precision and instinct, and brought to life through a steadfast commitment to an analog process in an increasingly digital world. We caught up with Ashworth to trace the journey that shaped him, unpack the ethos behind Swiss Grit, and explore why stepping away from the screen remains essential to his work.

WHAT DOES WORKING ANALOG ALLOW YOU TO ACCESS THAT DIGITAL DESIGN CAN'T, AND WHAT LED YOU TO FULLY COMMIT TO ANALOG MEDIUMS AS THE WORLD BECAME INCREASINGLY DIGITAL?

When I’m away from the screen I’m away from limitations. I find that my mind can wander to unexpected and more original places.I find working in this analog way both inspirational and exciting which are feelings I crave and ones that I don’t feel from working on a computer. I don’t feel like I’ve ever fully committed to the analog ways, the Mac has been ever-present and in certain ways has helped define my approach - the layouts wouldn’t be what they are without the body copy setting that I’ve done on the Mac so both go hand in hand! I just favor a huge lean into handmade elements as I believe they bring soul and originality to the work.

DISORDER: SWISS GRIT VOLUME II SPANS WORK FROM 1997 TO THE PRESENT. WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE REVISITING SUCH A DEEP ARCHIVE AFTER SO MANY YEARS, AND HAVE YOU UNCOVERED NEW IDEAS OR DETAILS THAT STAND OUT MORE NOW THAN THEY DID BEFORE?

When I started working on my book, I honestly didn’t think it would get published. I know that sounds stupid, but I really just started doing layouts because I love editorial design and wanted to find a way of putting my work together in one place. A year or so in I did a page count and realised I was north of 1,000 pages - so I had to split the book into two. Hence Vol II coming first. I’ve never been one to follow convention. I’ve found alot of the WIP from sketches and doodles to discarded ideas and work that was either never published or was a step along the way - these are the things that excite me most - documents of the creative journey because they show the creative experience in play.

YOU'VE DESCRIBED SWISS GRIT AS A BLEND OF SWISS TYPE AND STRUCTURE WITH SOMETHING MORE SOULFUL AND HANDMADE. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THIS STYLE DEVELOPED, AND HOW YOU FEEL THIS MEETING OF ORDER AND IMPERFECTION INFORMS YOUR WORK?

The term Swiss Grit fuses two worlds together. The former being the precision and clarity of the Swiss Graphic Design School of the 50s and 60s - white space, sans serif typography, grids, structured layouts, etc. The latter being what I call the visual language of the street. When you walk around a city and see signage or posters marked, ripped, falling apart from the sun and the rainfall…they’re living typographic documents that are changing by the day. I can feel the soul of these when they catch my eye. So Swiss Grit is the combination of both of these things.

YOU'VE EMBRACED HAND-DISTRESSING AND LETTING THE ELEMENTS SHAPE YOUR WORK - DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE, OR MOST UNEXPECTED METHOD OF DISTRESSING YOU'VE EXPERIMENTED WITH? WHAT WAS THE RESULT?

I did a project for Adobe a few years ago and needed to create some original background textures. I drove my Mini out of the garage. Taped about 30 sheets of A3 / 11 x 17 paper to the floor, and just went about my days for about a week - parking the car over the sheets, and then driving it away for errands etc. After a week I pulled up all the sheets and scanned them in. I had some wonderful textures that weren’t like anything else I’d seen before.

GIVEN YOUR TIME AT RAYGUN, COLLABORATIONS WITH MUSICIANS, AND YOUR CONTINUING SOUND IN PRINT SERIES, YOUR WORK IS INTRINSICALLY LINKED TO MUSIC. HOW DO YOU FEEL SOUND INFLUENCES YOUR DESIGN PROCESS?

I don’t think I’ve ever designed something without music in the background. There’s a longwinded answer, but the short one is that it gives me energy and direction.

WHAT'S ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU'D GIVE TO AN ARTIST INTERESTED IN EXPANDING THEIR PRACTICE?

Do it your way. There are no rules. No limitations. To quote Ian Curtis - Let it out somehow.

IF YOU COULD SHARE A MEZCAL WITH ANYONE DEAD OR ALIVE, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

I’d share it with Martin Gore. Because his words have touched me in a way that nothing else has. Enjoy the silence.

Find Chris Ashworth on Instagram.

Listen to Chris' Madre Radio playlist.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED ON YOUR GRAPHIC DESIGN JOURNEY?

I left school with 1 O-level in art. And no idea of what I wanted to do. I had no confidence, and my grandad who was my best friend growing up died from cancer the summer I finished so it was a real low point. My Mum had a friend at church who was an art teacher and she did two things for me that changed my life. She helped me develop my drawing skills once a week at home, she would come over and we would pencil draw still life objects…sofa, vase with flowers etc. That helped build my confidence and looking back now helped me in lots of ways - mentally. She also suggested a basic CPVE craft course in Southport which I did for a year with some amazing young people, some had learning difficulties, some were lost like me but we made some crazy stuff…I remember carving a rabbit out of a log! Whilst I did all that I became interested in the OND graphic design course at the same college but you needed a minimum 3 O-levels to get on it. So I retook my O-level maths and English and scraped both - Maths at the second attempt. So from there I just flew. Loved every second, and went on to do a two year HND course in York which specialised in typography which was by that point, my passion.

ARE THERE ANY ARTISTS THAT PARTICULARLY GOT YOU INTERESTED IN GRAPHIC DESIGN, AND ANY THAT CONTINUE TO INSPIRE YOU TODAY?

In my teens, I didn’t really think in graphic design terms but the music that I was listening to happened to be predominantly from the North of England. It came ‘packaged in graphic design’ and it just so happened that it was ‘Peter Saville graphic design’ - Joy Division, New Order, which then expanded to his wider work for Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester. This then opened my eyes to the designers - 8vo, Mark Farrow and Johnson Panas who were all Manchester born designers working in the music industry and doing groundbreaking work. Today I get my inspiration from the street.

YOUR WORK OFTEN BEGINS WITH CUTTING, PASTING, TRACING, AND REWORKING TYPE BY HAND. WHAT DRAWS YOU TO SUCH A TACTILE PROCESS, AND HOW DOES IT SHAPE YOUR RADICAL APPROACH TO TYPOGRAPHY AND DESIGN?

In 1985, when I was 16, my mate and I would rent VHS movies and record them for ourselves. Whilst watching them we would cut up free film magazines we’d got from the video shop and design the cardboard VHS tape box to reflect that particular movie. This is where my love of cut-and-paste started. I went through 3 and a half years of design college before the Mac showed up in the last 6 months of my course. So by then I was programmed to be an analog designer. I got so much joy from the analog process that any other way just didn’t appeal to me. I believe that a tactile, analog approach creates a unique and soulful outcome which pixels and the digital world cannot beat.