brief / approach

Back then I had an unhelpful mix of very keen & very inexperienced..!?

I unwittingly made the final artwork for the printer solely by hand, using my beloved Rapidograph technical ink pens & tiny compasses at the actual size it’d appear when printed – on the 7″ single in this case – not realising that it should have been done on a much larger scale proportionally and then reduced back down the way comic books were done…

Hence the professionally questionable letter/character & line spacing – which unfortunately I couldn’t pass off at the time as a rebellious ‘punky’ attitude..!

backstory

I got the original commission from Jake Riviera by the side of the stage at the Roundhouse when he was still Dr. Feelgood’s tour manager and they were playing live…

I was there for one of my first design jobs – for the George Hatcher Band – who were supporting the Feelgoods…

I’d very briefly met Jake for the first time a few days previously at United Artists’ london office when a mutual friend, UA’s influential & highly regarded A&R man, Andrew Lauder had offered me the chance to design a new logo for George Hatcher – back then I was touting my lettering & typography wares and hadn’t yet done a record cover…

Jake said he wanted me to evoke his spiritual approach to starting Stiff – one that stemmed from replicating the spirit of the early American record labels’ practice of filling the ‘trunk’ of your car with boxes of the latest record releases and delivering them to honky tonks & bar’s jukeboxes & local radio stations… obviously..!

At that time there weren’t any independent labels in the UK – only the seminal Skydog label in Paris whilst Beserkley in California were only just getting started – both of them would soon become involved with Stiff…