Magculture founder Jeremy Leslie speaks about being a fresher at LCC in 1981

Date
23 October 2014

There’s a reason Jeremy Leslie is one of the most knowledgable guys on the planet when it comes to magazines, he spent a good few years at London College of Communication back in the 1980s honing his skill when magazines and printed matter were in their absolute heyday. We were curious as to the experiences Jeremy had at art school in the early 1980s and how much (if at all) it informed his love for publications today. Naturally, we wanted to see what he looked like back then. Turns out it’s similar to what everyone looked like in the 1980s: the same, but with more hair. Here he is on student life and the value of a good education with fantastic tutors.

Where did you go to university and what did you study?

I studied on the foundation course and then the Media and Production Design degree at the London College of Printing, now London College of Communication. MPD was a four year graphics degree that introduced the then radical idea of work experience. I specialised in typography at first but switched to moving image when I got frustrated with the typography teaching. It was biased against meaning in favour of the technical. I was already making my own music fanzine and wanted to express the music rather than limit myself to a selection of ten typefaces. I’d seen the Letraset catalogue, I knew there was more!

Above

Jeremy Leslie

Tell us about your first few weeks there

My first few weeks on foundation were a shock. I hadn’t worked for my A levels because I’d already been accepted on the foundation course, and I remember school friends laughing about art school being all sex and drugs. Turned out LCP was bloody hard work, and my friends elsewhere did the drugs. But I loved it, all this stuff I’d been vaguely aware of in my peripheral vision was suddenly centre stage, and I was learning something new every day. I felt part of something for the first time, and went through the rite-of-passage that is occupying a building to protest against funding cuts. The tower block was ours! For a night.

Tell us about what kind of person you were, and your first impressions of student life

I was very green. I’d grown up in London and had floated from school to LCP without much thought. From being one of the few people I knew that “did art” I suddenly was part of a whole group with that shared interest, many of whom who had uprooted their lives to move to London and LCP. It was very challenging but hugely exciting. Design was a much smaller, discrete world than it is now so it was like being inducted into a secret club. A club with subsidised beer.

Tell us about your style at the time

I was obsessed with very specific, bright shades of red and blue and started on Foundation wearing a lot of that. I’m not sure the word “style” quite covers that. But by the time I finished my degree I was back in black.

"Design was a much smaller, discrete world than it is now so it was like being inducted into a secret club. A club with subsidised beer."

Jeremy Leslie, magCulture

Did you make friends easily?

I was too shy to say easily, but there were plenty of friendly people (and subsidised pints) so despite myself I had friends.

Was university what you expected?

Not sure what I expected. It was eye-opening in all the right ways, a chance to spend time experimenting and making mistakes. We had a strong timetable and structure that I enjoyed resisting. Today’s courses seem too unstructured, leaving students to either float (boy, how I would have floated!) or spend too much time building their own structure. Art school should be about resisting structure not establishing it.

What was the highlight of your time there?

Being treated as an adult by two great tutors, John Taylor and Steve Dwoskin, who encouraged me to have the courage of my convictions and combine storytelling and typography via moving image. Thanks to them I cut across the grain of the course and found my own direction. That and being student union events officer and booking The Monochrome Set to play. I now deny booking Gary Glitter one Christmas.

If you could do it all again, would you go to university?

I’d jump at the chance. On a fully subsidised student grant, right?

Back to School
Throughout the month of October we’ll be celebrating the well-known autumnal feeling of Back to School. The content this month will be focusing on fresh starts, education, learning tools and the state of art school in the world today – delivered to you via fantastic in-depth interviews, features and conversations with talented, relevant, creative people.

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About the Author

Liv Siddall

Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and worked across online, print and events, and was latterly Features Editor before leaving in May 2015.

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