brief / approach

Originally, the Peepshow cover was going to be a fold-out pop-up toy theatre with the Siouxsie and all the Banshees available as cut-out figures that could move about on the stage - however the rush deadline changed all that - but also my design career...

  ...the weird news was the extreme rush obviated the need for making the usual physical artwork - the saving grace news was the printers were going to let me ‘art direct’ the design directly on/in their innovative & magical digital print production computer...

   ...I say on/in as it was huge and its various hardware components were housed in dust-free, double glazed, thermostatically-controlled booths - the main one of which you sat inside to operate ‘Paintbrush’ - the proto-Photoshop program (not even called applications then, never mind apps…)

backstory

...I had brought some Siouxsie-approved 5”x4” transparencies which they scanned and we then spent most of an amazing and literally & metaphorically eye-opening night going through every colour, hue & saturation distortion and filter effects we could find or conjure until I settled on the final image - which, looking back, ironically looks like a glorified solarized photograph..!

  ...nonetheless, the enormity of this new print production paradigm shift and of what’s also entailed when, instead of me physically  'making' the artwork - as I had learnt to do & always done - they simply clicked a key to digitally output all those complex required instructions for printing - the way we all now just touch ‘print’ on our screens - didn’t hit home until a year or so later when I was learning how to use an early Apple MacIntosh...

   ...yes, it was (and is) amazing & incredibly time saving to be able to design and ‘make’ your artwork on a screen - however, what was about to be lost forever was the designer’s ability to be able to change, adjust and experiment with the physical artwork after you’d made it but before you finally handed it to the printer...

    ...I often completely re-designed jobs, altering and re-doing the physical artwork’s different overlays to achieve very different visual outcomes - now, once your happy with your design on screen one click also sends it all out of your hands…

  …hence my interest in my project exploring the differences & similarities between analogue & digital design methodologies in the ‘How To Make An Album Cover Before Photoshop…’ feature also on this ‘site…