Eye Magazine

Paul White would have you believe that the name Me Company was a ‘joke which struck’. Whatever its origin, it could not be more apt. Me is Paul White – his company, his platform, his vision. ‘I’m a tyrant,’ he says, and means it. Me Company, based in Kentish Town, north London, is one of only a handful of British design companies working for the popular music industry which has managed to forge a distinctive personal signature. Like Vaughan Oliver’s V23 and Designers Republic, Me’s extensive portfolio of record covers and associated promotional material is as much the embodiment of White’s personal preoccupations as a selling tool for the various artists he serves.

The six-strong studio is currently expounding a lavish techno-kitsch aesthetic, the strange fruit of its experiments with Macintosh-based 3D modelling software, and Me Company’s stock has never been higher. Its work on Debut, the 1993 album by the Icelandic singer Björk, provided a significant breakthrough. As Debut’s success catapulted Björk into the mainstream, Me, who had collaborated with her closely for some time, both as a solo artist and as part of The Sugercubes to which she had previously belonged, were pulled along in her slipstream. Now clients from outside the rarefied world of music have come knocking. Among them are huge corporate players like Nike, who want to bathe in the reflected street credibilty the feel Me Company can provide.

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Jim Davies, design writer, London

Read the full version in Eye no. 21 vol. 6, 1996

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