ABCDEFGHUMAN is the name given to work leaving the studio of multidisciplinary designer and installation artist John Lancaster. Articles can be worn, read, felt, heard, tasted, watched, experienced, and lived in.
‘Start by attempting to design something already known to be functional, like in architecture. Good design is making it completely different to anyone else, like in art.’ — JL
INFLUENCES
Technology and humanity work in parallel.
Design is shaped by that relationship, and own experimentation is central to that shaping, particularly with technology itself. Years spent working with synthesizer technology and spatial design demonstrate how often the best results occasionally arrive by accident — a wrong setting that turns out to be an addictive bass line, an incorrect communication drives a signature piece that would otherwise never have been made, and so on. Technology often rewards humanity by the result of unpredictability.
That relationship has changed shape across a century. Early twentieth-century designers worked within one set of tools; early twenty-first-century designers work within another, vastly expanded set — new materials, new machines, new ways of making that unsettled established practice. What hasn't changed is the discipline of paying attention to what the tools do when pushed past their intended use.
The name itself — ABCDEFGHUMAN — began also by accident. An invitation arrived to work on brand design for a fact-checking technology company on a global stage — with no formal experience in the discipline beyond the studio's own projects. The brief was experimental by necessity. What emerged from it established an inherent method: invite people to look again, and see it differently.
Today, the studio is designing its future as it happens. What stays constant underneath is simpler: originality, and the comfort of being at ease in our shared or personal space. Those two things will always be relevant, whatever form the work takes next.
John Lancaster
Born in Worksop, closest to the industrial steel city of Sheffield. Studied English Literature, reading modern poetry, before leaving mid-course for a position as a BBC-desk data analyst at the Performing Right Society in London. From there, a career in electronic music. First at Carlsbro, then at The Synthesizer Company, working with modular and rare synthesizers, before signing as a recording artist to the SPV label in Germany. On retiring as a performing musician, was appointed studio manager at Square Centre Studios, Nottingham, shortly after acquiring ambient label em:t records. The work expanded from there into the design and installation of large creative spaces — photography, dance, experiential, and media facilities — and from spacial design into conceptual fashion. Appointed a designer member of the British Fashion Council in 2017. Opened bespoke clothing and couture studios in Kensington, Bermondsey, and Vauxhall — closed in 2020, as the pandemic closed in. Studied graphic design and branding. Founded ABCDEFGHUMAN late 2020: a multidisciplinary, experimental design practice, drawing together the full range of a career spanning forty years across sound, space, art, fashion, design and publishing, like SUBS Vol 1 + 2, and Electronic Edition with contributions from Mercury Prize winner Adrian Utley (portishead), Ivor Novello recipient Hanna Peel, author, actor and podcaster Scroobius Pip, and experimental artist and composer Scanner.
Contact john@abcdefghuman.com