brief / approach

Ten Pole Tudor were the only other 'punk band' assuch on Stiff apart from The Damned. Eddie was an extraordinary bloke, a break out star from the Sex Pistols movie. Their musical style was pop-punk and they had an unusual penchant for the medieval world of heraldry, Ivanhoe etc.

The innovative lettering for their logo comes from distressed rub-down transfer lettering sheets made by Mecanorma - the French version of Letraset - and was created thus:

...on smooth white artboard  you transfer your letraset text, and rub it all down, relatively neatly (but not necessarily).  Then cover it up with a black magic marker to obscure it, then get a bit of masking tape and rub it down firmly over the text lettering and lift it off taking the letraset with you - like your were removing hair from legs  only your lifting off the actual transfer letters...  that process leaves it looking  all knackered with crackily white lettering with rough edges appearing...  Then put it under  the process camera (used to make artwork for the printer to print from...) to make a solid black on white paper  photographic print  - then do a 'negative reversal' print of that and you've got 'crackly' black lettering on a white background...   Finally I  did a print of that onto acetate - and combined it with a smaller type size version done with white 'Letraset' also on acetate and layered them up...

All stuck on the photograph for the album cover to be scanned as one image for the printing the LP cover...

backstory

I was so lucky. There was so much stuff to do at Stiff that I had to experiment. There wasn't time to schilly schally.

A lot of the covers I'm really proud of - West World, a lot of the Lene stuff, this one - are all born of 'I wonder what happens if I do this?'...