Morrissey: Greatest Hits

The back cover and inner bags were made to ape the Penguin Poets series with their Elizabeth Friedlander designed covers. The intent was to link Morrissey’s back catalogue with the classics of British poetry and literature, albeit with a modern spin. (Steve Hare has written a great article in August 2008’s Creative Review about these covers)

The design of the endpaper / cover is tailored to the repertoire represented on Greatest Hits. Each song on GH has a custom icon drawn for it, and each of these icons are patterned into the wallpaper in cells of a grid constructed by the bow of a violin (Ringleader of the Tormentors) and a Thompson sub-machine gun (You Are the Quarry).

A new crest was drawn for this release, with an Irish wolfhound (with incorrectly pointed ears) and a rampant lion holding up the ‘M’ initial in a shield with other elements from songs on GH incorporated.

The special edition was printed by London Fancy Box onto uncoated stock before being stuck onto heavy board (400gsm, from memory) giving it a fantastic quality and weight. As per Ringleader the CD onbodies mimicked that of a vinyl but due to cost constraints we didn’t get away with having black undersides on these ones.