How important is the computer to your design work? A computer of one sort or another has been central to all the work we've done since 1988. Having said that, I can't work any computers I have - even reading or answering email. There was an excuse for my intimidation in the early years of having computers in my studio. I remember feeling it was a little like my mother not using a calculator. It's the net, and net-based communications such as email, which I feel the most handicapped by not using.

So you work with a computer operator? From the technical point of view of design, I'm happy to sit with a proficient operator of whatever programs are required for the work. I don't feel a need to know what Photoshop V.10 does, but if I'm using it on a project I want to be with someone who does. The key moments in screen-based digital design are the bits we can't see in our mind's eye. Mine works in an analogue way... from information placed there by looking at things and by my knowledge of art. I imagine things based on information logged in my mind. The computer shows us things in between. Those "computer moments" aren't based on human aesthetics, but on the arbitrary logic of the machine.

Is it mostly PhotoShop you work in? I've done an enormous amount in PhotoShop these past few years and usually use if for stuff you're not supposed to use it for. The guys I work with experiment with filters such as Median or Smart Blur and we use them for things they weren't intended for. When I did the cover for Pulp's album This Is Hardcore, we were curious about Smart Blur so we tried it and it was fantastic. It took the edge of photographic reality off the image and made it a little like a photo-realist painting.

So the computer gives you another hue on the palette? A famous graphic arts book, Ways of Seeing, suggested the digital environment was another place we had to look at. In the early 80s we used the Apple Macs to do things quicker. I didn't learn to use them because I had a genius assistant Brett Wickens. He was so proficient it seemed churlish to bother.

Any thoughts on Jonathan Ives' design work on the iMac and iPod? He has done a fantastic job. The past few years have repositioned what we imagine of a computer. The iPod is more than an aesthetic statement: it's almost a reconfiguring of how we understand where music comes from. Its design is interesting in that it is not designed. The iMac range is quite retro.

Online content? There is a culture where people are reluctant to pay for content. Also, if things don't happen immediately, they move on to another site. That has led to a culture of impatience. There's something not quite concrete about web sites. Why do people who boot up their computer first thing in the morning still buy newspapers? We're becoming more aware of what the net is useful for but also what it isn't.

Peter Saville's bookmarks

www.lrb.co.uk
www.colourwash.co.uk
www.showstudio.com

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www.urbis.org.uk