Stylogenyin the style of Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Postmodern · 1977–1990 · Western Europe

Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Also known as Factory Records design, UK new wave sleeve design

The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

The sleeves are in copyright, and several of their quoted images have their own authors, such as Harold Craft's pulsar plot and Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of the Appiani tomb: make a new quotation from a public-domain or licensed source rather than copying a Factory, Stiff or 4AD cover or its colour code.

01

How it works

  • Quote rather than invent: lift one image from outside music (a scientific plot, an old-master still life, a Futurist poster, a cemetery sculpture, a floppy disk, an industrial warning sign) and let the borrowing carry the record's mood.
  • Put that single image on a quiet, often black or white field, or let it fill the sleeve edge to edge, and shrink, code or omit the band name and title so the sleeve reads as an object before it reads as an advertisement.
  • Take order from the modernist pioneers (asymmetric placement, small spaced capitals, flat blocks of colour, a catalogue number) instead of punk's ransom-note collage.
  • Hide a riddle in the package, as Barney Bubbles and then Peter Saville did: a sticker that completes the title, a logo that turns a bass guitar into a hammer and sickle, a deliberate miscrop, die-cut postcards that say DON'T JOIN, a colour code that only the back cover decodes.
  • Make production part of the design: textured, marbled, silver or gold card, spot varnish on black, die-cut outer sleeves, silver inner sleeves and printed bags.
  • In the romantic strand, blur, tint and crop photographs of ice, grass, fabric and figures until they turn ambiguous, and set sparse lettering over them.

British independent labels after punk: Stiff Records in London (founded August 1976; Barney Bubbles its designer and art director from early 1977), Malcolm Garrett's Buzzcocks sleeves in Manchester (from 1977), Factory Records in Manchester (founded 1978; Peter Saville, from its 1978 club poster FAC 1), and 4AD in London (founded 1979 as Axis, renamed 1980), whose sleeves came mostly from Vaughan Oliver and the photographer Nigel Grierson, working as 23 Envelope until 1988

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Photocopy & distress, Photocopy & zine, Eclectic mixing, Horror vacui, Abundant decoration, Ornamented display, Agitational & persuasive

Palette

  • #111111
  • #ece6da
  • #b23a48
  • #f2c230
  • #a9c4dc
  • #b8963e

Typefaces

  • Peter Saville's colour-coded alphabet, one coloured block per letter, decoded by a wheel on the back of Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and used for the title of Blue Monday

  • Small, ordered sans-serif capitals in the manner of Jan Tschichold's New Typography, which Saville took as his model from the 1978 Factory poster onwards

  • Formal classical capitals after the lettering Jan Tschichold used in the 1940s, which Saville linked with the face John Foxx had used on Ultravox's Systems of Romance, for the title of Joy Division's Closer (1980)

  • Lines that double as letters, after a Fortunato Depero Futurist poster

    New Order, Movement, 1981

  • Wim Crouwel's 1960s alphabet for computer and television screens, revived by Peter Saville Associates for the word 'Substance' on Joy Division's compilation (1988, V&A E.2304-1990)

  • 23 Envelope's 'hand-written' Cocteau Twins logotype

    Victorialand, 1986

Known for

  • Peter Saville with Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures (Factory FACT 10, 1979)

    Harold Craft's plot of successive radio pulses from pulsar CP 1919, taken from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy and reversed to white on black, with no lettering on the front; offset on card (V&A E.2274-1990)

  • Martyn Atkins and Peter Saville, Joy Division, Closer (Factory, 1980)

    Bernard Pierre Wolff's 1978 black-and-white photograph of the Appiani family tomb at Staglieno, Genoa, on white card (V&A E.357-2011)

  • Peter Saville, New Order, Movement (Factory FACT 50, 1981)

    blue lines on light blue card after a poster by the Futurist Fortunato Depero, read as an F for Factory and an L for 50 (V&A E.607-2014)

  • Peter Saville, New Order, Power, Corruption & Lies (Factory FACT 75, 1983)

    Henri Fantin-Latour's A Basket of Roses with a colour-coded alphabet in place of type, the decoder wheel on the back (V&A E.2290-1990 and E.606-2014)

  • Peter Saville and Brett Wickens, New Order, Blue Monday (Factory FAC 73, 1983)

    a die-cut sleeve shaped like a 5¼-inch floppy disk with a silver inner sleeve, the title given only in coloured blocks; Factory reportedly lost money on early copies, until later pressings printed the die-cut in silver ink to limit the cost

  • Peter Saville Associates (Peter Saville, Brett Wickens and others) with Malcolm Garrett, OMD, Dazzle Ships (Virgin, 1983)

    a yellow-and-pink inner sleeve after Edward Wadsworth's dazzle camouflage, moving behind a die-cut outer sleeve (V&A E.2283-1990)

  • Barney Bubbles, The Damned, Music for Pleasure

    (Stiff, 1977), cover painting by Bubbles; the V&A copy (E.46-2011) records the out-of-focus colour photograph of the band before a blue, red and yellow geometric backdrop. Also his photomontage tour programme for Ian Dury and the Blockheads, faces replaced by razor heads (1978, V&A E.312-2011)

  • Barney Bubbles (as Big Jobs Inc), The Damned, Damned Damned Damned (Stiff, 1977)

    a red 'food-fight' sticker reading 'Damned Damned' on the shrink wrap completes the title when read under the band's name, and a limited run of early copies deliberately carried a photograph of Eddie and the Hot Rods on the back

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This stylePost-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)1977–1990 · Western Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. V&A, Peter Saville and Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures, 1979, E.2274-1990: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O191218/
  2. V&A, Martyn Atkins and Peter Saville, Closer, 1980, E.357-2011: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1260452/
  3. V&A, Peter Saville, Movement, 1981, E.607-2014: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1296386/
  4. V&A, Peter Saville, Power, Corruption and Lies, 1983, E.2290-1990: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O191234/, and E.606-2014: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1296385/
  5. V&A, Peter Saville Associates (Peter Saville, Brett Wickens, Malcolm Garrett and others), Dazzle Ships inner sleeve, 1983, E.2283-1990: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O191227/
  6. V&A, Peter Saville Associates with Wim Crouwel's typeface, Substance, 1988, E.2304-1990: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O191248/
  7. V&A, Barney Bubbles, Music for Pleasure, 1977, E.46-2011: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1192918/
  8. V&A, Barney Bubbles, Ian Dury and the Blockheads tour programme, 1978, E.312-2011: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1223472/
  9. V&A, 23 Envelope, Sunburst and Snowblind, 1983, E.263-1989: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O131058/
  10. V&A, 23 Envelope, It'll End in Tears, E.266-1989: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O133564/
  11. V&A, 23 Envelope, Victorialand, 1986, E.293-1989: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O177378/
  12. V&A, Vaughan Oliver and Simon Larbalestier (23 Envelope), Surfer Rosa inner sleeve, 1988, E.259-1989: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O130095/
  13. Design Museum, Peter Saville: https://designmuseum.org/designers/peter-saville
  14. The Face, extract on Peter Saville reproduced by Cerysmatic Factory, 'Peter Saville: Industrial Manoeuvres in the Art' (Tschichold's 1940s classical lettering and the Closer sleeve): https://factoryrecords.org/cerysmatic/peter_saville_industrial_manoeuvres_in_the_art.php
  15. Adrian Shaughnessy, 'Remembering Vaughan Oliver', Creative Review, 7 January 2020 (Surrealism among his influences): https://www.creativereview.co.uk/remembering-vaughan-oliver/
  16. Wikipedia, Vaughan Oliver (inspiration from Salvador Dalí, Surrealism and Pop artists; 23 Envelope's artwork for almost all 4AD releases until 1987): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Oliver
  17. Wikipedia: Peter Saville (graphic designer); Factory Records; Unknown Pleasures; Closer (Joy Division album); Movement (New Order album); Power, Corruption & Lies; Blue Monday (New Order song); Barney Bubbles; Stiff Records; Music for Pleasure (The Damned album); Damned Damned Damned; Malcolm Garrett; Another Music in a Different Kitchen; 4AD; 23 Envelope

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.