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.

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.