Trainspotting (1996)

“Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?” — Mark "Rent-boy" Renton

Danny Boyle’s supercharged heroin drama Trainspotting kicks off at a run, panting and pithy. Upon its release in 1996, the film was met with hype and hysteria and not a little scorn. It was condemned by critics and Daily Mail crusaders who deemed it irresponsible and accused it of glamorising drug use. But Trainspotting is a horse of a different colour, a film that uses electrifying style, unflinching empathy and coruscating language to give voice to a generation trapped in the margins.

The opening title sequence is a lengthy, haphazard affair featuring narration, a roll call, several scenes, and a chase. As Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” barges in and Ewan McGregor’s voice narrates, author Irvine Welsh’s characters are introduced at breakneck speed, hoofing it down Princes Street in Edinburgh. First comes McGregor’s Renton, staring wild into the eyes of a driver who narrowly avoids hitting him. He’s smiling, alone and set apart from the rest of the cast. Cut to a football match (actually filmed in Glasgow), where Sick Boy shouts in indignation, Begbie gets his rocks off, Spud sputters about in the goal, and Tommy is overwhelmed in a corner. Their names appear alongside their frozen forms, scratchy and mussed.

Set in the late 1980s, Trainspotting takes place in a time when Scotland was caught in a vice grip of high unemployment and a so-called "heroin epidemic" which nearly led to a national outbreak of HIV/AIDS. Prominent anti-drug messaging appeared in memorable advertising campaigns like "Heroin Screws You Up", devised by Sammy Harari, then director of the advertising agency Yellowhammer.

The commercials were intended to shock and frighten viewers from trying the drug, shot in a cinema verité style with minimal set-up and lighting. They also highlighted a sort of brutal, grungy, lean aesthetic – heroin chic. In its derelict sets and soiled clothes Trainspotting crystallized this look, boiling down the residue of these campaigns along with music video influences and hints of the surreal. For the design elements of Trainspotting, Dylan Kendle and Jason Kedgley of multidisciplinary collective Tomato generated grimy titles and burned out images of the cast, matching the film’s filthy yet minimal aesthetic.

The opening narration became a kind of mantra, made even more famous thanks to promotional posters. The phrase at the start – "Choose life" – was first popularized by English design icon Katharine Hamnett, appearing on oversized t-shirts worn by members of pop acts like Wham! and Queen throughout the ’80s. For Hamnett, the statement was a political one, a rejection of consumerism. Trainspotting takes the phrase and builds upon it, laying out a list of choices – the typical dangling carrots of capitalism – and then pushes it all aside in favour of heroin and nihilism.

In navigating between electrifying style and terrible squalor, Trainspotting ignited a massive fanbase. It came to represent a specific time and place, becoming the voice for an alienated generation and an attempt to contextualize addiction and disease as byproducts of an ecosystem. Of course, it also became the film most quoted in American college dorms. At least, until the release of Fight Club, three years later.

A discussion with Trainspotting Title Designer DYLAN KENDLE of Tomato.

Can you give us a bit of background on yourself? How did you get into design and how long have you been with Tomato?

DK: Right, so my father was a graphic designer. I suppose I followed in his footsteps. I went to art school and I was at Camberwell when I met two of Tomato... Tomato is a collective. I think they started in ’91 and I probably met them in ’92. And two of them actually taught at Camberwell, which is where I was a student. And so…

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