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.

Christophe Willem was the winner of France’s Nouvelle Star in 2006. Sony BMG France (now Columbia) tasked Stylorouge with designing and art directing his debut album, Inventaire.

Christophe and the team at Sony BMG were heavily involved from the onset, as Christophe had a very strong idea of what image he wanted to give the public. Realising that most people think that Pop Idol winners are marionettes manipulated by the music machine, Christophe wanted to convey an idea of there being more to him than his showbusiness persona.

Based on this brief, we decided to go over the top with the cover, but to slowly reveal the true side of Christophe through a narrative that would be provided by the singles to follow.

Old Busby Berkeley references were passed around and they stuck—they were striking and spoke spades about show business and gave us enough material to manipulate for the singles.

As we were showing mockups Christophe wasn’t satisfied with the direction, thinking that it didn’t hint that there was something under the pomp and flamboyance. He came up with the idea of implying that the cover image was a screen which he was rolling up—and in doing so getting rid of his stage personality, something that is carried through to the back cover.

On the back cover, the false screen of fame is rolled up and all that is revealed is the real Christophe standing in an empty room which represented life without fame in contrast to the velvet and gold. This room is shown in the lyrics booklet, but as the album progresses feathers from the front cover fall in and eventually obscure the zen like peace of room.

The first commercial single, ‘Double Je’, carried this theme of duality further.

The type used is a custom Serif Gothic paired with one of my favourite faces, Andrejs Grinberg’s Brewery, a face I would use more often if it had an italic accompaniment.

Photography by the lovely Sandrine and Michael.
Christophe styled by
Erica styled by Lou at Unconventional.