TDR™40 - "We Are Fifth Apes" - Screenprint

We only exist in the present… that is the only reality. The past is the story of how we got here, for better or worse. The future is purely an idea, and creativity is based on ideas. From the past comes the future. TDR’s work is always about people, we are defined by the marks we make,… where, when, how and, always, why. It’s been that way since the first cave drawings…

In that sense, Ooh Aah TDR… a play on the tribal football chant Ooh Aah Cantona… was a more accurate record of TDR’s process than the manicured visual noise of Unit Editions AZTDR™’s greatest hits.

“From the fallout of AZTDR’s un-archiving / collating process, from the physical, photocopied, lost and found, and the unmade to the lo-res, half-remembered fragments floating in our ether, bouncing back off other people...”

It’s what we were doing when we weren’t doing what you thought we were doing. Scraps of memories and ideas still on their way to becoming something else, as randomly unpolished a fanzine as a curated story could be, a sketchbook by people who note rather than sketch ideas, deliberately thrown together (and pulled apart) over a few days… ideas having a party without getting dressed up for it. It existed in the present, with attitude. By default if it were collated and designed now it would be completely different.

‘We Are Fifth Apes’. We felt that idea covered what we were thinking… so it was the cover of the book.

If the four great apes define our evolution (orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, human) the Fifth Ape imagines what comes next… humanity's evolution into an automated, consumer-driven society. Part science fiction, part philosophical provocation, it asks whether technological progress has brought us closer to liberation, or deeper into systems of consumption.

We are fifth apes… beautifully imperfect, bitmapped, half remembered, out of focus, dayglo multicoloured, multicultural, stupidly tribal apes at best, at least, pissing up a wall marking our territory.

To mark forty years of The Designers Republic™, a time when we’re being forced to look back when we’re more comfortable looking forward… ‘what if, rather than what is’… we've produced, by popular demand, of course, a special four-colour-fluorescent anniversary edition of this accidentally iconic design. Created exclusively for the 40th anniversary collection, the limited edition print celebrates the legacy of the design, the idea, while remaining a distinct and distinctly consumable release in its own right.

Maybe ‘the work continues TDR™’s long-standing exploration of corporate mythology, consumer culture and postmodern critique'. We Are All Fifth Apes captures TDR™’s 'maximum-minimalist aesthetic, combining densely packed ideas with clean, geometric precision. Every print is meticulously screen printed in Sheffield, by fellow-travellers, Imp, honouring the 'thinking and doing’ that's defined The Designers Republic for four decades.

You’re right, of course… the truth, such as it is, is that we made this piece to decorate our own work (thinking) space… and we’re arrogant enough, as all creatives need to be… to think some of you might like to do the same.

Limited Edition Screenprint.

Hand-stamped, debossed, signed and numbered.

500 × 700 mm.

Edition of 100.

Fedrigoni Sirio Ultra Black 280 gsm.

Four-colour fluorescent screenprint.

Screen printed at Imp. Studio, Sheffield, UK.

TDR™40 2026.