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.