The Real Designs of Imaginary Foundation

Words: Phuong-Cac Nguyen

Photo: Jessica Miller

You couldn't fault Nick Philip for being slightly wary when he received a peculiar e-mail two years ago from a group of stodgy Swiss intellectuals seeking a designer to visually translate their philosophy onto T-shirts, those favored pop cultural commodities. The name of their group, Imaginary Foundation, was enough to make anyone apprehensive. But the inquiry turned out to be an auspicious one for Philip. He's now the prolific designer of the group's Surrealism-inspired tees, which have become cheeky must-haves for academic geeks and streetwear enthusiasts alike. "[Imaginary Foundation] galvanized a lot of the things I've been thinking about over the years in design projects and artworks I've done," he shares.

Those ideas Philip references in his designs come from the real-life Imaginary Foundation, a clandestine, eccentric assembly of academicians and philosophers begun in 1973 and led by a septuagenarian with doctorates in physics and philosophy who holds 25 worldwide patents and whose father conceived the Dada movement. While Dadaists embraced nihilism, Surrealists, though inspired in part by Dadaism, valued the ordinary and embraced Freud's theories about the strength of the unconscious. It's the latter that drives Imaginary Foundation's function. "They believe everything around us in culture and what we see [is] essentially one idea... so the power of the idea and imagination is the power behind all of culture," explains Philip. "There's an incredible potential for creating beauty and harmony with our own minds."

Because the philosophical powerhouse is engaged with futurecasting, consulting and research on new ideas and sustainability, Philip acts as the public face of Imaginary Foundation when it comes to both the shirt line and other production responsibilities. The creative process between the group and Philip is just as odd as the collective itself -- Philip figures he's talked to the elderly director about twice on the phone and all other communication is through e-mail. Those exchanges have been enough to help him hone the aesthetics of the line: a cut-and-paste meld of spirited, free-floating, unassociated images inspired by compelling and clever phrases that are the results of Imaginary Foundation HQ brainstorm meetings. For instance, the latest collection features such head-scratching slogans as "The Future Is Unwritten," "Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal" and "I Believe in Music." Philip explains, "They want to aesthetically express that all of reality is co-created by our consciousness. All of us, together, through our collective unconscious, co-create this reality."

But the question remains: why did these deep thinkers venture into the youth market, through such a common and arguably saturated medium? The director explained it to Philip once. "He said to me, 'Streetwear is the Trojan horse,'" he recalls. "[Imaginary Foundation] is interested in the fact that these kids are so open to images which may or may not have a meaning, so why not give them something that has meaning? It's sort of an experiment."