Design: Tony Wilson & Peter Saville In Conversation

If I could listen to anyone discuss the classic Factory sleeves it would be Peter Saville and Tony Wilson so lucky for us someone got the two of them together with a tape recorder between them. Here we have two old friends fondly looking back over their work and discussing the myths and truths associated with it, running through their beginnings together with an early poster for one of the Factory nights through Joy Division and New Order sleeves and on.

Download
zShare Download

This conversation originally appears as an extra on the 24 Hour Party People DVD. Thanks to Nick Dart.

[Apiento]

Design: Peter Saville Talks Joy Division & New Order Sleeves

This piece seems to follow perfectly the Savage piece from The Face and is taken from a Gareth Grundy interview with Peter Saville in The Observer last week with Saville talking through his work for Joy Division and New Order.

Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (Factory, 1979)

This was the first and only time that the band gave me something that they’d like for a cover. I went to see Rob Gretton, who managed them, and he gave me a folder of material, which contained the wave image from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. They gave me the title too but I didn’t hear the album. The wave pattern was so appropriate. It was from CP 1919, the first pulsar, so it’s likely that the graph emanated from Jodrell Bank, which is local to Manchester and Joy Division. And it’s both technical and sensual. It’s tight, like Stephen Morris’ drumming, but it’s also fluid: lots of people think it’s a heart beat. Having the title on the front just didn’t seem necessary. I asked Rob about it and, between us, we felt it wasn’t a cool thing to do. It was the post-punk moment and we were against overblown stardom. The band didn’t want to be pop stars.

Joy Division: Closer (Factory, 1980)

This cover for the band’s second album was like a work of antiquity, but inside is a vinyl album, so it’s a postmodern juxtaposition of a contemporary work housed in the antique. At first, I didn’t believe the photo was an actual tomb but it’s really in a cemetery in Genoa. When Tony Wilson (Factory co-founder) told me Ian Curtis had died I said, ‘Tony, we have a tomb on the cover.’ There was great deliberation as to whether to continue with it. But the band, Ian included, had chosen the photograph. We did it in good faith and not in any post-tragedy way.

New Order: Blue Monday (Factory, 1983)

I’d been to see the band in the studio and Stephen gave me a floppy disk to take home. I thought it was a beautiful object. At the time, computers were in offices, not art studios. The floppy disc informs the design and the colour coding was from my interest in aesthetics determined by machines. It reflected the hieroglyphic visual language of the machine world. For example, the numbers in your cheque book aren’t really for you, they’re for a machine to read. I don’t know if the story about the label losing money on the cost of the sleeve is true. I sent the cover straight to the printers because everyone was in a hurry. I doubt the printers even gave a quote for Factory to respond to. The band had handicapped themselves as no one was likely to play it on the radio because it was seven minutes long. Ironically it sold a lot, and with an expensive sleeve.

New Order: Power, Corruption & Lies (Factory, 1983)

The title seemed Machiavellian. So I went to the National Gallery looking for a Renaissance portrait of a dark prince. In the end, it was too obvious and I gave up for the day and bought some postcards from the shop. I was with my girlfriend at the time, who saw me holding a postcard of the Fantin-Latour painting of flowers and said, ‘You are not thinking of that for the cover?’ It was a wonderful idea. Flowers suggested the means by which power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives. They’re seductive. Tony Wilson had to phone the gallery director for permission to use the image. In the course of the conversation, he said, ‘Sir, whose painting is it?’ To which the answer was, ‘It belongs to the people of Britain.’ Tony’s response was, ‘I believe the people want it.’ And the director said, ‘If you put it like that, Mr Wilson, I’m sure we can make an exception in this case.’

New Order: Low-life (Factory, 1985)

The only sleeve with the band on it. I was at an impasse at the time – there was nothing conceptual I wanted to put forward – the unexpected thing to do was a photo of New Order, which for the band was beyond the pale: they didn’t even want to do a press shoot. They were photographed individually, so no one felt self-conscious, and we used a Polaroid film so they could see the pictures. As soon we got one they liked, we stopped. The tradition was that you would put the singer on the front, but I wanted the strongest image on the front and that was of Stephen, the drummer. Later, I found out that they never really believed those photos would end up on the cover. The next time I saw them, at a gig, they said, ‘You bastard.’ I don’t think they liked the sleeve. This was the nature of the relationship.

New Order: True Faith (Factory, 1987)

This was a first work from real life. In 1986, I happened to have a trauma in my personal life and it made me very attuned to the world around me. Suddenly, I had no filters. I was parking the car one night and a leaf drifted by the window and I thought, ‘That’s so beautiful.’ It was framed by the windscreen, which is probably why I saw it as an image. So we did a leaf. I went to Windsor Great Park with photographer Trevor Key, came back with about 50 leaves and shot two or three until we found the right one. It had to be the right shape and look like it was falling. There was no digital manipulation at this point. I still have the leaf although I keep thinking that one day it will fall apart.

New Order: Technique (Factory, 1989)

I’d moved on from being interested in 80s consumer products and had begun going to Pimlico Road to look at antique shops. Which was where I saw the cherub statue we used on Technique. It was a garden ornament and we rented it for the shoot. It’s a very bacchanalian image, which fitted the moment just before the last financial crash and the new drug-fuelled hedonism involved in the music scene. It’s also my first ironic work: all the previous sleeves were in some way idealistic and utopian. I’d had this idea that art and design could make the world a better place. That even bus stops could be better. In some ways it’s also quite neo-Warhol. And before he’d even seen the sleeve Rob Gretton suggested ‘Peter Saville’s New Order’ as the title of the album. As in ‘Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground’. That went down like a lead balloon with the band.

New Order: Regret (London, 1993)

I was broke after the recession and it made me look more critically at the world. I’d picked up a copy of Richard Prince’s Spiritual America at the Walker art museum in Minneapolis. It made me appreciate how strange contemporary America really was. Later I spent a month in Los Angeles – and there was something about the experience that was like the end of the world. There’s nowhere further to drift, it’s the terminal beach where the western world washes up. It was the first time I did a New Order cover listening to the record – I wrote down everything that came into my mind. I wrote ‘cowboys’ for Regret because of the way it rolled. And cowboys referenced Richard Prince and the Marlboro Man on Sunset Boulevard. Juxtaposed imagery blending into something molten, the way you might see the world if you were hallucinating.

New Order: Retro (London, 2002)

I’d been in the Helmut Lang store in New York and in the entrance was an assemblage which he had made: two large carved wooden eagles around a huge glitter ball. Months later, when the request of doing the cover for Retro was put to me, I couldn’t get eagles and the glitter ball out of my mind. It represented both Joy Division and New Order. The eagle was dark, brooding, gothic and where the band came from – Joy Division. The glitter ball was what happened afterwards, which was New Order. The glitter ball is deliberately broken, so the eagle is picking away at disco. Helmut Lang was OK with us referencing his work. It was a very memorable photo shoot. Tilly the eagle was a lovely bird, she does a lot of TV work, but when a creature like that is actually standing next to you it’s terrifying.

Joy Division & New Order: Total (Rhino, 2011)

I realised this was a record that would be sold in supermarkets and advertised on television. So the cover has a ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ aesthetic. As you open it out, it says ‘Total’, but folded up you just see the ‘O’s. It says, ‘From Joy Division to New Order’. I couldn’t bear the words ‘Best of’. It’s a long way from the independent record shop to Tesco, almost 33 years. At Factory, I had a freedom that was unprecedented in communications design. We lived out an ideal, without business calling the shots. It was a phenomenon.

[Apiento]

Just Because 022: It’s A Smiley Sort Of Day

[Apiento]

Design: Adesivo Del Vagabondo Con La Chitarra

Loads of nice stuff going on over at Ying Yangs. These images are of a character called Adesivo Del Vagabondo Con La Chitarra which apparently means vagabond with a guitar. They were associated with the cosmic scene in Italy in the early 80’s. Well hippie.

Thanks to Jiro at Ying Yangs.

[Apiento]

Just Because 021: Advert For Grace Jones ‘Living My Life’

[Apiento]

Exhibition: NOWHERE – Trevor Jackson At KK Outlet

We like an exhibition and this one is by recent Test Pressing interviewee Trevor Jackson so all the more relevant. Here’s the press release…

“NOWHERE features highly personal photographic and video studies that explore related themes of honesty, simplicity, manipulation and ego.

KK Outlet presents the first solo show of renowned image and music maker Trevor Jackson. NOWHERE features highly personal photographic and video studies that explore related themes of honesty, simplicity, manipulation and ego.

NOWHERE reflects a subtle side of Jackson’s visual personality, the works are a move away from his recognisable bold commercial graphic style. This stylistic divide is something that Jackson explains as the difference between how he views graphic design and art, “Graphic Design is essentially problem solving, you’re responding to a brief and reflecting the clients personality and opinions, as much as I still enjoy that process, this new work is expressive and at times cathartic, something that has little place in much of my commercial work.”

All works featured in NOWHERE are limited editions and will be on sale throughout March at KK Outlet.”

The exhibition runs from 4 – 26 March.
www.kkoutlet.com

[Apiento]

Just Because 019: ZTT Advertising

Thought and fine design on show here. Stolen wholesale from Trevor Jackon’s Facebook page (more from him soon).



[Apiento]

Design: Tony Wilson’s Gravestone

Feels kind of weird writing ‘Design: Tony Wilson’s Gravestone’ but I guess that’s where it fits in. I meant to post this a while back but here’s a fitting tribute from Peter Saville and Ben Kelly for their friend Anthony Wilson which, in classic Factory style, arrived three years late. The black granite headstone carries a quote, chosen by Wilson’s family, from The Manchester Man. Click here to see more images and information at the Creative Review site.

[Apiento]

Design: Richard Robinson Genre Map

A good friend of the family, Richard Robinson, created this map linking musical genres together and we thought we’d share. He’s a quality designer and there is a fair chance the man behind many of the sleeves currently sitting in your record collection if you own anything on Tirk or Nuphonic. Make a lovely wallpaper for your desktop if you need a new one.

Check Richard’s website to view more of his work.

[Apiento]

Design: Tomato – Red Top Haiku (The Return)

Another installment of our very irregular art and design corner. Here’s Dylan from the Tomato design agency (more from him soon) with more red top haiku.

[Apiento]

Design: Tomato – Red Top Haiku

This is only our second post covering design but we hope to do more in time. Tomato are an agency that shot to fame in the 90s for their groundbreaking work with Underworld (amongst others) and are back on the awards trail as well as using our lovely tabloids to create poetry (nice work Dylan). If you have the slightest interest in graphic design its worth having a dig through their website.

[Apiento]

Just Because 008

Thanks to Nick Dart.
[Apiento]

Just Because 007

If you were wondering where we got our name… Happy new year people.

[Apiento]

Just Because 006

[Apiento]

Just Because: 004

I love my Mac. It let’s me do all this stuff. As stolen from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s twitter feed.

[Apiento]

Taken By Storm

I like this post, it gives me an excuse to post the above image. Storm Thorgerson is a legend. As one of the people behind the legendary design company Hipgnosis, Thorgerson has created many classic record sleeves including work for Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and The Mars Volta (above). This Saturday is the last weekend of his exhibition at the Oxo Gallery on the South Bank. The work on show is pretty special if you have even a passing interest in sleeve art and Storm himself was there when we went last weekend so aim for between 12 & 2 and take a gold pen and your copy of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’. As my friend who is a graphic designer said when we were down there, ‘I just want to do one of these’.

The Oxo Gallery is at Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London SE1 9PH.

[Apiento]