Just when you thought 2019 couldn't get any more surreal.
(Image credit: Pornhub/Peter Saville)
Ever feel that this is the final season of humanity, and the writers are pushing out all the crazy story ideas that they weren't allowed to get away with before? Also, have you seen that Peter Saville's designed the trophies for this year's Pornhub Awards?
Yes, that Peter Saville. Co-founder of Factory records, designer of a whole stack of iconic album covers including Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Eno and Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Peter Gabriel's So. Over the years he's also designed the England football team home shirt, the livery for Manchester's Metrolink tram system and Burberry's new logo, and he's even had a stint at Pentagram.
Oh, yes, and that Pornhub. Last year it roped in Kanye West to design the statues for its inaugural awards – a celebration of its most popular performers – and since it's hard to go much bigger than Kanye, this year Pornhub's got an actual design legend to do the business. And to be fair he's delivered, with a stunning piece of organic and sensual experimental design (check out some non-porn-related experimental design examples here).
Admit it, this would be one hell of a conversation piece to have around the house (Image credit: Pornhub/Peter Saville)
It's a striking piece in bright orange that, Saville tells Ad Age, is inspired by the molecular structure of sex hormones and other behaviour-modifying chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. "My intention was to maintain a degree of ambiguity in the final form the award took, with respect to the sexual spectrum so impressively encompassed by the award category line-up," he says.
He hasn't gone quite so far as Kanye, whose 2018 design was basically a sex toy, but there are definite elements in it that you might expect to find gracing the pages of specialist ecommerce sites. "Sculpturally the award has a bio-fluidity about it, abstractly evoking orifices, penetration, sperm and bondage toys," he explains, and notes that the big creative challenge in this project was "to design a trophy celebrating sexuality without reiterating the clichéd symbolism of erotica." Well, quite.
Hang on, what if we end up getting an invite? We're meddling with forces we can't fully comprehend here (Image credit: Pornhub)
We're sure that the award winners – categories include Top Fetish Performer, Most Popular Verified Amateur and Top Female Solo Performer – will be delighted to have Saville's design gracing their mantelpieces. The 2019 Pornhub Awards take place on 11 October at Los Angeles' Orpheum Theatre; you can find out more here.
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Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
