Paul McCartney played two dates at Boston’s Fenway Park earlier this year.

Admat and ident by No Allegiances.

Continuing his Live ‘09 tour, Paul started August by playing a show at Washington D.C.’s FedEx Field with advertising material designed by No Allegiances.

A glowing review of the show can be read here.

Photography by Kevin Mazur.

In 1965 the Beatles christened Shea Stadium with its first ever concert. Forty four years later, Paul McCartney played the first concert at Shea Stadium’s replacement, Citi Field.

A review of the show can be read on Rolling Stone.

The ad buy included a Long Island Expressway “Domination”—which is what the site is actually called. The CBS Outdoor website reads like a list of war crimes. “Choke point”, “Domination”, “CBS RIOT”, “beyond body counts”, all a bit frightening, really.

The titling on this is a customised Odessa.

Long Island Expressway picture courtesy of the always amazing Laura Manzari.

Michael Muller shot Morrissey on the grave of Johnny Ramone for this cover.

The CD two inner bag carries a reproduction of the Camden Town engine house which eventually became the Roundhouse—where the Ramones first played the UK in 1976. There’s a great seven-minute long doco about this show you can watch here.

Pat Pope took these shots of Morrissey in front of the Alone in London hostel on the corner of Kings Cross and St. Pancras Pentonville road which were used for the Maladjusted reissue.

The hostel is still there and is still committed to helping homeless youth in London but the sign has since been replaced with one with a modern logo. More information about Alone in London can be found here.

As much as we wanted to stray from the School of “Go-To” Albion Typography nothing quite says London like Gill or Johnston do and why avoid clichés just for the sake of avoiding clichés?

We went with Farey and Dawson’s gorgeous re-imagining of Johnston’s original for its more modern take and for the italics that are available for it. Titling was done in a modified P22 Johnston Underground for its rawer character.

To further reinforce the London connection a vintage map was licensed for use on the end papers. The map is cropped to run from Fulham to beloved East London, albeit on the inner pocket of the wallet.

Linder Sterling took the shots of Morrissey in El Paso which we used for the Southpaw Grammar reissue.

Years of Refusal, Morrissey’s ninth studio album has been released on Attack / Lost Highway (USA) and Polydor (rest of the world).

Mexican folk art and vintage California drove the art direction of Years of Refusal. Working around a photograph taken by Jake Walters of M holding a plump, drooling baby, we echoed the subtle Mexican sounds in the music by using typography inspired by José Guadalupe Posada, one of Mexico’s most famous illustrators and printmakers to give everything a kitschy frontier feel.

To accentuate the chiaroscuro of the cover image and painting, the LP and special CD / DVD versions were run on fabric-textured stock which makes the record feel like an oil painting hanging in the Louvre that you shouldn’t have just touched. The CD / DVD version comes in a mini LP gatefold and was again made by the lovely people at London Fancy Box who did a fantastic job of putting together a solid, high quality package.

Band photography by Travis Shinn (not seen here). Bodegon Con Jarra de Vino, 1914 (oil on canvas) by A. Fuentes, photography by Arturo Osorno / INBA / The Bridgeman Art Library

The first single from Years of Refusal is “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’. Shot by Jake Walters in Los Angeles.

The inner bags feature candid pics of the band shot by Travis Shinn and paintings of Paris by Jules Herve and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

No Allegiances has been asked to serve as UI design consultant to Playlouder for their revolutionary ISP-based file sharing service. Details are hush but in effect users pay the ISP a monthly fee on top of their standard plan in exchange for unlimited music downloads which stay within the network. The revenue from the monthly fee is then shared amongst the repertoire owners, making everybody happy and introducing a new model of music distribution and culminating with everyone holding hands, singing (properly licensed and paid for) songs and dancing on the corroding corpse of The Man.

As everything is in progress there’s not much to show except for these pretty pixel people living in their perfect pixel world where music is shared freely (but where the artists and labels are still remitted fairly for it).

Further updates as they come. Playlouder logo designed by Stylorouge

One of my favourite bands Thursday ran a T-shirt design comp towards the end of 2007. I submitted a couple of designs and while this one didn’t make the cut (the one that made it to the shortlist was this) I received an e-mail from their management asking if they could use it.

“Fuck yes”, was the reply. I don’t think they’ve printed it yet, I’m not sure if they ever will, but I’m just chuffed as all hell that they were even close to using this for merch.

This design made the shortlist for a merch contest that Thursday held last year.

It ended up coming in fourth but a few weeks after the competition ended Thursday’s management contacted me and asked to use this design in an upcoming range. As per the Heart design it’s not seen the back of a sweaty meathead in a moshpit yet but I hold hope.

‘All You Need Is Me’ was the second release from Greatest Hits. The patterned paper on this was made of snakes, globes, eyes and stars.

Also released as two 7″s and a CD wallet.

See also Morrissey Greatest Hits and That’s How People Grow Up

Cover photography by Jake Walters.

A design for Morrissey’s show at the Paris Olympia in February 2008. Originally intended to be a limited edition poster, the merchandiser decided to not take a punt on a run of 100 posters for an individual show.

This design was run on T-shirts instead. Again in the Vienna Succession style, although this one features Nike holding a wreath surrounding a bomb—the figure of Nike was taken from a Vivat ribbon in the Imperial War Museum.

See also Morrissey Roundhouse Poster

A tour poster designed for the Brighton based five-piecer Ghost of a Thousand done for BIMM Bristol. It’s a fucking Cerberus, yo.

Ghost of a Thousand have been together since 2004 and fly a bruised and battered flag for ballsy British hardcore. They’ve shared the stage with Gallows, Poison the Well and are a must see live. Get your ears shredded here.

A poster in the Vienna Succession style using the arches of the old Camden Roundhouse to make the “M” initial. Limited run of 100 posters, printed in gold by Lesley Sharpe. Posters were sold out during the show’s run.

See also Morrissey Paris Olympia

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.

See also That’s How People Grow Up and All You Need Is Me

The first single from Greatest Hits was the Jerry Finn (R.I.P.) produced ‘That’s How People Grow Up’. In keeping with the artwork for the album, a new endpaper directly relevant to the lyrics was designed for this in a powder blue.

The pattern features elements referenced by the lyrics such as scythes, hearts, hourglasses and tears.

This was released on CD in pochettes and spined 7″ wallets.

Cover photography by Jake Walters.

See also Greatest Hits and All You Need Is Me

Morrissey had been residing in Rome while writing and recording Ringleader and we wanted the design to echo the inspiration.The cover was shot by Fabio Lovino who also shot M on the streets of Rome with every allusion to Italian life and industry—on a Vespa, next to political graffiti eating gelato, in front of an old Fiat, playing football, under pizzeria signs and in between lines of linen hung out to dry. Some of these shots became the covers of the singles from Ringleader.

The branding focused around the cartouche and crest. The fleurons framing the cartouche were taken from triumphal arches found in books of Roman architecture. The “M” crest was aped from Rome’s official seal with his initial replacing “The Senate and the People of Rome” and we designed a monogramme in vein of an Italian high-fashion house to run on the inner bags. This monogramme carried into merchandising—silk scarves were printed with the pattern á la Louis Vuitton (a French fashion house to be sure). The crest featured on lapel pins, Tiffany-style keyrings, tie-pins, cufflinks and even girls’ pants.

This was done at Stylorouge. Mark Higenbottam at Stylorouge drew the typography for M’s name.

A bit of a story here. Stylorouge was invited by Parlophone to pitch for Paul McCartney’s thirteenth studio album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

Whilst not involved with this project from the beginning—the creative on the ‘Fine Line’ single was done by James Cooper and Mark Higenbottam based around Brian Clarke’s line art—I took it on when Rob, the creative director at Stylorouge fell ill.

After an all-nighter, the boards were ready for Rob to take to his meeting with Paul. As I was leaving the office to get a fry-up and some sleep I got a call from his wife Jane saying that he had been taken ill.

When the rest of the troops rolled in crisis talks dictated that with James being in Amsterdam pursuing his music career and me being closest to the project I would do the presentation. At this stage I was too delirious to realise the enormity of it but in hindsight—having the biggest job your studio has seen in months riding on your presentation is daunting, but having to do that in front of one of the forefathers of modern British music on absolutely zero sleep—I should have been packing it.

The only thing I was worried about was not having had a shower and still wearing the only clean thing in my laundry and having gone out the night before the night before in it. I managed to stop by a Tesco’s on the way to MPL to pick up a can of deodorant before going into the meeting.

To kill the waffle, the meeting went well and Paul approved all the visuals on the spot.

Rob had proposed that we run an old photograph of Paul for the cover as Chaos and Creation we were told was largely a reflective album. This also solved the tricky situation that we didn’t have any recent photographs of Paul to use on the artwork.

The idea of “reflection” also led to the jewel case tray being lined with a sheet of reflective gold foil. These trays caused problems in America because it was setting off alarms in stores that had magnetic theft protection systems. Only when you’re working for an ex-Beatle can you get away with things like that.

Rob’s idea for a “Paul McCartney” ambigram was also a reference to the idea of reflection, albeit somewhat loosely as an ambigram is less a reflection than it is a rotation of a word. The ambigram was what took the longest time on the design and it was after working on it for days the combination of the “CART” of Cartney was achieved. There’s a discussion on Typophile about this, and I agree with the criticisms levelled at it.

Given the opportunity to draw it again I can see where things could have been improved but I did use what I learnt drawing this for a shirt in Schwipe’s Eyes Don’t Lie range.

The booklet was illustrated with line-drawings by Brian Clarke of Paul’s hands and features.

The cover being a photograph was printed on satin stock and the inside pages on uncoated. I was later told that all these factors—gold blocking on the o-card, the gold inlay and two-tone stock made it one of the most expensive releases in Parlophone’s history. Burn.