Tag Archives: Factory Records

From the Archive; Malcolm Garrett interview

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Screen Shot from Malcolm Garrett's website, showing Buzzcocks graphics, photographed by Nick Harling

Screen Shot from Malcolm Garrett’s website, showing Buzzcocks graphics, photographed by Nick Harling

I love collections, and exhibitions of collections, especially when they inspire designers and their work, so I would very much like to make the journey to Manchester (which I wrote about, here) to see Collecting Malcolm Garrett, part of the design festival, Design Manchester 17. In celebration of Malcolm Garrett and his work in the music industry (which he spoke about at Pick Me Up, reviewed here), I’m posting another previously unpublished interview from the British Council exhibition, Sound Design. Malcolm mentions his old school friends, Peter Saville (read that interview here) and Keith Breeden, who I also interviewed, so watch out for that interview too.

Malcolm Garrett, interviewed by Liz Farrelly on 12/7/2000.

Liz Farrelly: Where did it all start?

Malcolm Garrett: The Buzzocks was 23 years ago. It came about because I wanted to do a sleeve that wasn’t just a piece of cardboard and I was always interested in corporate graphics, as opposed to corporations, and subverting corporate graphics and systems graphics too, because a record sleeve is fundamentally information. So I was looking at it from an informational standpoint, as opposed to an art gallery standpoint. We were selling something so much more ethereal than say, banking services, so there was a frisson there. And because, with the Buzzcocks, some of their songs were looking at the nature of society and relationships in quite a detached way, it seemed appropriate to misappropriate some form of informational graphics.
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From the Archive; Peter Saville interview

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The London Design Festival is the capital’s most prestigious design event, taking over the city for much of September each year. Back in 2013, Peter Saville won the London Design Festival Medal; I interviewed him for Blueprint and the article is available online via DesignCurial. At the time I asked a number of creatives about their favourite Saville works, and one guest blogger, Paul West of Form, mentioned True Faith by New Order, with photography by Trevor Key. Now, a display of work by that legendary photographer, a regular collaborator with Saville, is on show as part of Hull 2017, UK City of Culture. Trevor Key’s Top 40, features his iconic photographic images for some of the twentieth century’s most famous record sleeves. I’m using this opportunity to post another unpublished interview with a contributor to Sound Design, this time Peter Saville, as a number of their joint efforts featured in this exhibition, which the British Council toured across Asia and Australia in the early years of the new Millennium. These edited interviews come from long phone conversations or studio visits. I tried to keep the interviewees focused on the topic of designing for the music industry, and rather than bombard them with penetrating questions, I preferred to let the designers do the talking and reminisce anecdotal stories about the finer details of working with musicians and labels. You can find the Aubrey Powell interview, here, and there will be more in this series. As I’ve said before, I’m reluctant to post copyrighted images to illustration the interviews, but this Japanese website offering a complete discography of Peter Saville’s record sleeve designs is all you’ll need.

Peter Saville, interviewed by Liz Farrelly on 1/8/2000.

Liz Farrelly: Tell me about your involvement with Factory Records.

Peter Saville: Going right back to the beginning, I was at school with Malcolm Garrett, and at that point our horizons stretched no further than a Hawkwind, Velvet Underground or Roxy Music cover. Then Malcolm went to Reading University, and courtesy of the library there, the history of twentieth-century design became known to us, via his reading list, which included design theory that we at Manchester Art College didn’t get. I started college in 1974 and graduated in 1978. Malcolm did a year at Reading University while I did a Foundation Course and I encouraged Malcolm to do his next three years at Manchester.
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From the Archive (and now); Destroy, punk and DIY

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So an email arrived inviting me to the launch of Punk.London at Oxford Street’s 100 Club, and I have to admit it didn’t totally intrigue me. Instead in gushed cloudy memories of a dark, sweaty cellar and an uncomfortable din, which I must have endured (it feels like) a hundred times over a couple of decades. But a closer look at the invite revealed this to be an occasion for nostalgia, a celebration of a 40-year anniversary marking London’s punk moment and the start of a movement, a subculture in fact, the long-tail of which has affected both attire and attitude.

Screen Shot from Punk.London website, designed by Brody Associates, inviting D-I-Y participation in a city-wide cultural event

Screen Shot from Punk.London website, designed by Brody Associates, inviting D-I-Y participation in a city-wide cultural event

“Subversive Culture” is the strapline (pardon the bondage-tinged pun), which it is claimed has fuelled creativity (now the Creative Industries) ever since. Over the coming year a host of venues will stage events big and small, backed by the Greater London Authority (GLA); shouting about London’s past punk credentials must have tourist-attracting potential. With an identity and online hub branded by Neville Brody (still demonstrating punk attitude by being “notoriously abrasive”, according to Digital Arts), for me the most innovative element is an prompt to organise your own event; tagged “D.I.Y.” the page offers links to branding and fundraising advice, via the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

Regardless of designated anniversaries punk is perennial, and it doesn’t need much of an excuse to hit the headlines. In 1998 I reviewed an exhibition, Destroy: Punk Graphic Design in Britain, and because it isn’t available on the magazine’s website I’m re-posting it, see below. Yes it was cheeky of me to declare punk to be the only “memorable cultural event in the 1970s”, but that’s a clue to my age. I may have been “witness” to the “heyday of punk” but only just; the article is unapologetically London-centric, too, hardly surprising as I was still at school and London was home. What isn’t mentioned is that I was a lender to the show too, having amassed a substantial collection of vinyl due to a fascination with indie record shops. I sold most of the best bits (the vultures were already circling at the Private View) as I became nomadic, leaving London in April 1998, and had neither the means (no turntable) nor inclination (changing musical tastes) to listen again.
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Sound Design UK Music and Graphic Design; reconstructing an exhibition

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Welcome to Sound Design: UK Music and Graphic Design, an exhibition from 2000. Staged on the cusp of the digital communications revolution it has no online presence and is therefore “invisible”. This post is an attempt at digital reparation, an experiment in creating a “trace” for a long-gone temporary exhibition by providing details of the exhibition-making process. The idea for an exhibition on the graphic design of popular music came from David Elliott, then Head of Arts at the British Council in Japan and a keen vinyl collector. I was asked to pitch a concept that would fit the brief and then employed as curator. The exhibition was designed and organised in the UK by the British Council and toured Asia and Australia. Sometimes in a venue for just a few days, it proved extremely popular, surpassed all expectations and toured for nearly three years; before opening in Tokyo it was already booked into venues in Sydney, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. However, there is no British press coverage, probably because the exhibition wasn’t shown in the UK. Masses of media was generated in Asian and a pile of clippings probably resides in the Tokyo office; I saw the fast-growing folder, and recently found a review in The Japan Times (“The cutting edge of sound and vision”, by Jennifer Purvis, 3/12/2000). (Eventually the British Council realised it was missing a trick and started to give touring shows a short run in the UK, with a Press and Private View to provoke media interest).

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This is the poster, in situ, displayed at the entrance to the Tokyo venue, The Ground. Instead of installing the exhibition at the British Council headquarters, it opened in this concrete-lined bunker (not the easiest place to hang a show) close to the epicentre of Japanese trendiness (between Harajuku and Meiji-Dori). However, in some correspondence The Spiral is named as venue, which would have been an even bigger deal! David’s brief called for an exhibition of UK music graphics; from the golden years of vinyl when British designers helped to invent the genre of “album sleeve art”, to recent annexation of the aesthetic high ground by indie labels and various subcultures. The aim was to come right up to date with examples of ingenious CD packaging.
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Manchester, old and new; accessible history in a city of museums

Gallery

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This gallery contains 26 photos.

Manchester is a city well provisioned with museums run by Manchester City Council, University of Manchester, independent charitable trusts, and national museum groups that receive government funding. Courses in Curating and Museum Studies are taught at University of Manchester and … Continue reading →

Guest blogger; assessing Peter Saville, legend

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Peter Saville Blueprint spread

Interview, 13 September 2013
Published, Blueprint, issue 331, 10 December 2013
Interview: graphic design legend Peter Saville talks to Liz Farrelly
Further contribution by Paul West, Form

For as long as this interview is available on the Design/Curial website, I’ll redirect you there; after that, I’ll repost it. It was a pleasure to be commissioned by Blueprint again after a few year’s hiatus. I worked in house from 1990 to 1994 beginning as Editorial Assistant, and writing from day one; I reached the heady heights of Deputy Editor, then freelanced under every editor until about 2006. Being asked to interview Peter Saville was the bonus; this is the third time I’ve had the opportunity to conduct a long interview with Peter, as well as having a few good chats along the way. He’s a great talker and it shows in the two and half hour transcript! Peter was to be honoured with the London Design Festival’s major award, which prompted the coverage. The award spiel mentions the winner’s contribution to design in London, and I realised that Peter’s amazing affect was as an inspirtion to and an incurbator of a considerable amount of graphic design talent that has gone on to make London the most important city in the world for graphic design. So, I asked around, and got a bunch of people to talk about their favourite work by Peter. Paul West had worked for Peter, and so I’m posting his contribution here as I couldn’t get it to the magazine by the deadline. Thank you Paul for adding such a great further contribution to the story.

Paul West: Where to start with Peter’s output. Who can’t love FAC1; the “Unknown Pleasures” pulsar; the “Closer” tomb, photographed by Bernard Pierre Wolff with the beautiful Lapidary typography; the “Blue Monday” floppy disc, his Section 25 work — the list is endless. To even go on more is redundant, so well catalogued is his work (alongside designers including Martyn Atkins, Brett Wickens, Richard Smith to name but three) that it’s entrenched in our popular counter-culture, in turn influencing culture.

True Faith

If I could name ONE piece of work I have loved above all other it is the fabulous “True Faith” 12″. This beautiful gold leaf suspended or floating on Yves Klein’s “International Klein Blue” backdrop, with the absolute minimum of information on the back cover (Name — Title / bside — Copyright — the all important Fac183 catalogue number — pre barcode!) and the way it fused art, hi-tech, independent couture, anti-couture; it feels as new now as it did then.

In 1987 I wrote my college thesis on Peter Saville Associates and Vaughan Oliver (V-23) and as a result I got through the doors and worked at PSA ’88 to ’89. I remember asking Peter about this cover and I him saying that the expanse of white on the back sleeve made the front sleeve look like an art piece, with the back cover serving as the catalogue descriptor. I loved that. It was so Warhol.

Of course so much of Peter’s great “visual” work is thanks to the genius of Trevor Key who had a studio space next door. I remember watching the exploratory work Peter and Trevor were doing for “Fine Time” and “Technique” and thinking how great it was, to be so progressive with such a spirit of discovery and invention, it was incredibly inspirational for a 20-something graduate. One day I was in Trevor’s studio talking to him about his work and looking through a massive pile of old test polaroids (including, X-Ray Spex “Germ Free Adolescents”) and I saw THE polaroid of “True Faith”. l had to ask. “Can I have it?”. “Piss off” came the reply. #legend.

From guest blogger, Paul West, Form

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