The designers finding beauty in nature's darker side

Designers Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons have been telling stories through their subversive designs for decades.

Finding beauty in nature's darker side and providing a social commentary on life in the modern world, for them the most interesting stories are often found in the details others overlook.

The duo behind the Timorous Beasties design studio first met while studying printed textiles at Glasgow School of Art in 1984.

What began as a shared passion for drawing and making things has challenged the traditional world of wallpaper design, defying convention through their use of imagery, historical references and social commentary.

"The images you normally see in the market are florals and animals and references to nature. We just take out the less interesting part," says Alistair McAuley.

"When plants do start to decay or animals attack other animals, anything that's a bit more detailed seems to be what interests us and the beauty that lies within that."

Long before hidden references became a staple of pop culture, the Glasgow-based designers were concealing entire worlds within their wallpaper patterns.

Storytelling and not being afraid to be bold is the ethos also espoused by Simmons, who uses the firm's Glasgow toile design to demonstrate his point.

The toile, which is based on a type of French textile, reflects life in parts of the city that maybe you wouldn't find if you went to the tourist board, he explains.

Elements in the design reference the Mackintosh church in Maryhill, a block of flats near their old studio, to someone injecting drugs in a graveyard and the message about life and death.

"There's all sorts of elements, stories in a lot of the work that we do," he says.

"We've always maybe gone against the grain in the world of textiles which, I guess, is quite straightforward and saccharine".

Illustrations are the basis for each of the 21 stories in a new book, Toile Tales, where drawings by Simmons inspired writer Steven Richardson to create a fable for each of them.

The idea is in keeping with their unconventional approach; in this book the drawings have inspired the words rather than the other way around.

"The inspiration is often from what isn't there. The idea is to push things that are slightly unusual and make them as beautiful as possible and put them out there for people to look at and live with," Simmons says.

A passion for things that are different and seeing opportunities to create something unexpected helped their work catch the attention of Kate Bush.

The singer asked the design studio to produce several album covers for her, including The Hounds of Love (Baskerville Edition) and The Dreaming (Escapologist Edition).

Their work has found its way into places that are varied and in some instances surprising.

Among them are hand printed curtains for the UK Supreme court, labels for Johnnie Walker whisky, shirts for Nike's golf players at The Open in 2019 and a football shirt for social enterprise Street Soccer.

One of McAuley's favourites was for "something that people use every day" - bank notes released by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2016 featuring otters, mackerel, red squirrels and osprey.

It's a long way from the start of their careers and the days of carrying a portfolio around, making calls from a phone box in a bid to get their work noticed.

From art school graduates with an inclination to "go against the grain", their journey has involved a lot of learning about how to run a business.

Aside from running a design and print room, it involves dealing with outlets, managing staff, feeling the impact of Brexit and global conflicts as well as adapting to changing laws on the environment and energy consumption.

"The thing I'm most proud of is the studio, because we set out to design and manufacture our own goods and that's what we still do," says McAuley.

A printing table produced for the design duo in the early years of the business is still in use today.

The traditional hand-printing techniques for their fabrics and wallpaper means "the lights could go out and we could still manufacture".

The techniques may be traditional but they are not untouched by new technology.

The duo believe the emergence of digital platforms has presented new opportunities which can also benefit young designers starting out today, making it easier to manufacture and get your work out there.

At the same time it has led to an increasingly crowded marketplace.

"Technology is there to be used as tools but they're not a substitute for creativity at all," says McAuley.

For the next generation of designers the advice is simple – remain focused but be open to change, be prepared to experiment and don't be afraid of failure.

"We draw what we are interested in, we produce in a way we think is important, it's not for everyone and that's also important for us. If we were for everyone we'd be Ikea and that's clearly not us".