brief / approach

 When The Theatre of Hate ended (or 'went dark')  Kirk Brandon formed Spear of Destiny and they were signed by CBS for their Epic label - I was asked to design the first single & ad campaign soasto keep some visual continuity and appeal to Theatre of Hate fans ...

  ...this ended up proving  problematic for me as the major record companies are a good/bad* example of corporate, music industry  'double speak' - a risk-averse, profit-only multinational trying to be 'cool  & down with the kids' who's marketing depts openly & unironically used the word 'exploitation' for their ad campaigns' aim of optimal amounts of  'units they could shift' rather than developing a new band so their records they could reach a wider audience  -  the opposite of the design attitude & record releasing ethos I & Stiff had fostered...

...it was problematic because for the new singles' covers I had redesigned an updated  version of the 'twin masks' logo and further developed the 'graphic style' I'd made for Theatre of Hate - and even though the band & management were keen Epic's marketing dept thought it was 'too deep and too dark' and insisting on dumbing it down and just using the background bits...

*depending on your views on how capitalism deals with creativity and the  'art for art's sake' principle...

backstory

 There is only one background texture used for the back & front of the 7"& 12" single bags - it doesn't seem like that at first glance because for each the  4 cover sides the same areas of the  basic texture are printed a different colour...

...it was made by sticking differing short lengths of masking tape to a cutting mat - mainly at right angles to each other in a slightly random, generic 'crossword puzzle-cum-street map' pattern - then 'roughing it up' with sandpaper & random scalpel cuts...

...this was then covered with a large sheet of thick tracing paper and rubbed over with the side of a black wax crayon (like doing a brass rubbing - also known as frottage...) to create the rough texture effect - the sheet was then moved slighlty up & across and re-rubbed again - then moved down & across the other way for a third rubbing to create the final multiple image/overlapping effect...

  ...you had to go to great lengths then to make something unusual that was also hard to work out how it was done - that can now be quickly done with Photoshop by duplicating & moving  3 layer copies out of sync..?!