At Home He's A Tourist

I think I've made it clear in the past on this blog that I am a Joy Division/New Order fan. What first drew me towards them was a t-shirt. I was in seventh grade, and there was this kid who was a junior in high school who rode my bus. He wore this New Order t-shirt all the damned time. I finally asked him about it, and he made me a tape. It was 1988, the year their album Technique came out. I liked it, so he made more tapes for me, and eventually a Joy Division tape. The only source I had for buying music was the K-Mart when my mom would go there. The world wide web was barely existent, and not as full of information as it is now, so that wasn't an option. We wouldn't have a computer in the house for another three years anyway. So, I had to rely on the information I saw on the tapes in the racks at K-Mart. Being a small town...and K-Mart, there wasn't much. But, New Order's singles compilation Substance came out the previous year, and that was kind of a big seller, so that was there. Wanting to get all the info I could about this stuff, I would scan everything in the liner notes, but I didn't learn much.

There was just something about the graphic design of all their stuff that really pulled me in. It was so simple and minimalist, but appropriate and ironic, and occasionally silly. I needed to know more. I learned a little bit from watching MTV's "120 Minutes," but not much. I really wanted to know more about 'The Factory', whatever that was, and any other bands that were related to all of this. It took me years to put all the pieces together. Did you know that techo pioneers like Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson were all heavily influenced by New Order? Oddly, in the early days of Detroit techno, the only clubs that would play their music were located in Manchester, UK. That happens to be where Joy Division, New Order, Factory Records, the label they co-owned with a few others, and The Hacienda (the Hacienda must be built), the dance club owned by Factory were located. But all of that is for another time. What I want to talk about is the graphic design.

Tony Wilson, the ringleader and founder of Factory Records was very particular about the public perception of the label. That meant that all visual representation had to be well controlled. This was easy considering that the graphic designer he worked with from the beginning also happened to be a partner in the label: Peter Saville. Many of you know his work whether you realize it or not. This one has been on two album covers, t-shirts, and many, many posters.

That was the album cover for Unknown Pleasures from Joy Division, and then when the original recordings were re-issued under the original band name (Warsaw), they used the same artwork. This next one is kinda weird. At a time when my friends were drawing the Van Halen symbol on stuff, I was trying so hard to write in the font Saville created for the green typeface on the 'greatest hits' from Joy Division (titled Substance, just like the New Order singles comp).

It's just so unique, yet simple. I love it. This next one was die-cut. To this day it is still the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time, yet they lost money on it because it cost more to make the record than what they were selling it for. The cover for New Order's "Blue Monday" single.

There was some sort of theme running through all of this, and I couldn't put my finger on it. In fact, I really couldn't at all until just a couple days ago when I was reading some essays about Saville on his studio's website. He never had to answer to the label or to the artists, because as far as Factory was concerned, his artwork was yet another piece of the catalogue. Appropriately, almost everything Factory did had it's own catalogue number. For an example, their club, The Hacienda, was FAC 51. All of their designs for company stationery had it's own catalogue number, festivals put on by the label had their own numbers. Everything was a piece of the puzzle. Joy Division's first album, Unknown Pleasures was actually the first full length record put out by Factory, yet it was FAC 10. The first item, FAC 1 was the flyer that Saville created for the weekly dance night Wilson put on at a small club in Manchester.

I'm starting to think that I developed my own interest in graphic design from Saville. I've always liked things to be minimal. I also like to combine high art with lowbrow whenever I have the chance. That's also a Saville characteristic. If you'd like to know more about him, check out the site that I linked to above. Even if you're just a New Order/Joy Division fan, you'll find some interesting things to read. The movie "24 Hour Party People" is a good start, but there are essays on that site that fill in a lot of holes. Plus, he has all of the fonts he created for the two bands' artwork available free for download on the site.