brief / approach

…In analogue times the marvellous rub-down transfer sheets were not just for letters - Letraset also made Letratone - a range of different-sized sheets of dots that came in 9 shades of grey from very light to almost black…  

   …they could give the same effect as the way tones, highlights & colour was added to outline-drawn comic strips - I used them like that for the Wreckless Eric ‘Big Smash’ cover & campaign - however their French counterpart - Mecanorma - also made a wide range of line effects & textures and that is what I used, in multiple overlaps, to make the illustration for this poster - based on the LP cover I’d just done….

   I developed that mix of mechanical & hand-drawn illustration style working on the early Theatre of Hate stuff along with the technique for making Letraset type look ‘scuzy’ & battered - first you rub down the letters as normal onto white artboard, then carefully colour it all over with a thick black felt pen, then firmly stick masking tape over the lettering and quickly peel it off (like a sticking plaster on hairy legs..!) that would remove most of the Letraset type but leave some little bits and a ragged edge - leaving roughened white type on a black background - then you’d do a photographic reversal print to make it into black type on a white background…

backstory

…that’s how I did Tenpole Tudor’s logo and the poster’s lettering - and, incidentally, also the back cover title track lettering for the Clash’s ‘Sandinista’ album - which was done by Julian Balme who worked in the Stiff Art Dept with me…

   …Paul Simenon, the Clash’s de facto art director, who often frequented our art dept, paid me with a 12” white label promo copy of remixes of Magnificent Dance/Magnificent 7 b/w Call out/Cool out - which was sadly digitally unavailable until the recent-ish comprehensive  Clash ‘Sound System’ ghetto-blaster boxset - wonderful dubby extended mixes that I still treasure to this day…