Erasure • Features • Interviews
Paul A Taylor (2004)
Please Note - APlus+ Ltd has only granted permission for their artwork used in this feature to be published on the EIS site - please do not copy them.
Paul - Can you briefly describe your role within Mute?
I'm the Art Director - I oversee all the art work that goes out of the building. I commission it or design it and I run the production department which makes sure that all the records get made, and I work on all the DVDs that we put out.
How long have you been at Mute?
This is my fourteenth year.
What was your first Erasure related work?
'Chorus' single if I remember rightly…
Do you have a favourite Erasure artwork?
I really love 'Cowboy' and I really love 'Wild!'
How much influence do Andy and Vince have on the artwork?
Vince doesn't like to be involved, he's very laid back and likes to see it when it's finished. Andy likes to be involved in the initial stages - he likes to have a chat about it, throw in a couple of ideas and he usually trusts us after that, as Daniel [Miller] will always be heavily involved with whatever comes out after so he'll trust me and Daniel to take it from there.
So does Daniel always have the final say on the artwork?
Yes.
At what stage in a typical album project is the artwork commissioned?
Usually about 3-4 weeks before the mixing of the album is completed we would have concept discussions, but we don't usually know what the single is by then.
Would you have heard tracks from the album when you're at the concept stage?
Usually would have heard about one track or a couple of the mixes - but that would be just a quick play in the studio.
How does the artwork of an album influence the single designs? Are single designs prepared in advanced - before their releases are confirmed?
We always try to make sure that any album concept that we do is expandable for the singles so it becomes a campaign - which I think as been done quite well with all the Erasure projects. The only one that went slightly strange was 'Cowboy', where we changed design companies half way through, so the first two singles ['In My Arms' and 'Don't Say Your Love Is Killing Me'] are quite different from the album and the final single ['Rain'] - but the final stuff was a lot better.
With regards to 'Other People's Songs', there was quite a gap between that release and 'Loveboat'. Did that influence the design at all? The artwork for the album and related singles is very striking on the shelves - as if to shout out 'we're back!'
Yeah - what we wanted it to be was to be quite different and quite fresh for an Erasure release, as well as keep an element of fun that Erasure have always had in their sleeves. But also with a nod back to that its Erasure, which we tried to do with the logo which I wanted to change but not radically - so it had a feel of an Erasure logo of old. I think it's [the logo] very similar to what was used on 'Sometimes'.
So we did that, and wanted to bring in something fresh so it didn't look like it had come off the back of 'Loveboat'.
I guess with 'Other People's Songs' you had more of an idea what the album was about than some of the other albums, with it being a collection of old songs…
Exactly. I hadn't heard any of the tracks when we went started the design process.
Could you talk me through the Other People's Songs design project?
It started off with a meeting with Daniel, who gave me a rough idea of what Andy wanted and then spoke to Andy. His main thing was that he wanted to have a gramophone in it, because of the use of older songs and that it has a warm, old feeling about it.
We then went round a couple of design studios who came up with a few ideas which weren't quite right for this.
Can you give an example of some of the ideas that weren't used?
One of the ideas focused on a red car bumper, with the car name on the back in metal saying Erasure, and then the gramophone was really small in the background as they didn't really like the idea of the gramophone, which wasn't really taking on board Andy's idea. It might have been quite classy, but also quite dull.
Other ideas included doing the gramophone in an Andy Warhol style, which is something that has been done many times before. So we turned those ideas down.
So what made you choose the design company that was used?
We had some bit and pieces through from A Plus+ Ltd which I thought were quite interesting, and I liked the idea that they hadn't worked on record sleeves before and thought they might bring a fresh approach to it.
They gave us about 20 different ideas for a sleeve, of which about fifteen were terrible, and five of them were really good.
We asked them to add some other fun elements into it, to make it quite colourful for the campaign, which they did with the gramophone and the hands, which we could adapt depending on what the singles were going to be. We really liked the hands - it really added to the fun, and they brought the gramophone to it in a new and unusual way which we hadn't really thought about before with it moving though the air. It gave the gramophone a lot of space for it to be used in the concerts, on posters, mechanise, the singles - the hands as well. They were two really strong images that we could use for a campaign and kept Andy's theme as a focal point.
We wanted something quite blue - we did try for a bright red sky but that didn't really work, but a blue starry sky did and Andy and Daniel liked it.
Had another brief meeting with Andy where he really wanted a teddy bear in the artwork somewhere. [One of the working titles of the album was Teddy Bear]. So I got this teddy bear photographed and had a chat with Gareth [Jones] who had taken a load of great candid digital photos in the studio and got those off him. [These photos be seen at Gareth's website]
To be honest they weren't great to be used as artwork, so I discussed this with Steve at A Plus+ Ltd and was really pleased with what he did with them and he made them look really good by processing them with loads of colours, and giving them more of a technical feel which with shots of Vince's hardware. And these were used as the inner booklet / sleeve images for the OPS release. [That artwork also featured as the design for the previous EIS website]
Andy and Vince were really happy with that, and they liked the way their images were used, particularly as they weren't the usual 'glamour' shots and were a bit weird.
As soon as we had done that we were straight onto Solsbury Hill, which we wanted to follow reasonably closely to the album, which is why the hands for example were used in a similar way.
Then we come on to Make Me Smile, and I came up with the idea of using a room, and Steve from APlus had the idea of actually drawing one.
I understand the drawings are actually based on his own house?
Yes! That's exactly right! He went back to Brighton, drew this room and I thought it was great. We were now inside where as the previous sleeves were outside and Steve managed to work out how to visualise what was needed, particularly with having the gramophone real in there.
The artwork for Erasure releases have always been distinctive, with a wide variety of different media being used to produce the work (computer generated, traditional painting, manipulation of photographs etc). Is the type of artwork something that is decided upon when it is commissioned or is it left to the artist in question?
Only really for the Erasure 'Erasure' album did this happen. [with the type of artwork being specified]
Andy and Vince didn't want anything to do with the sleeve. They were very much in the studio with Martyn and Gareth - as it was quite an in depth album and they really wanted to get their heads in there, so they gave Mute free reign with the artwork. They wanted to see interim stages but that was it.
So Daniel [Miller] wanted to art direct that sleeve, and he wanted to get some paintings done based on the work of Edward Hopper, in that kind of style.
So we got a guy called Ashley Potter to paint the sleeves in a similar style, which Daniel really loved, of Andy and Vince.
With the other releases, each time a new album is released we try and make it so each sleeve is quite different form the last sleeve.
We feel that for a band like Erasure, it is important to try something new each time.
This is why we decided to stop using Me Company for a little while, as the artwork was becoming a little too samey and looking like a series of Me Company sleeves instead of Erasure sleeves. They were becoming very 'lozenge' happy with a lot of things and it was all the same flow. And unfortunately we had seen that on a lot of the other things that they do such as Shamen, Bjork and a lot of stuff for One Little Engine.
But that is also why we went back to them for the Hits! Releases, as there was a large enough gap to use them again and they are a great design company.
Both Erasure and I have an enormous amount of respect for Paul White, and that really helps in any creative medium, I'm sure we will be working together again in the future.
The Hits! artwork certainly generated a large response…
Yes! [laughs], such as 'Why aren't we using Me Company!' Wasn't that the main one? [laughs].
What was the reasoning behind the use of the swans? I remember at the time several fans read a lot into it, such as it was Erasure's 'Swan Song' for example…
[laughs]
Well basically the original plan was for the computer generated swans to be Andy and Vince (as them - not as swans). It was quite a long drawn put process, but we couldn't get designs that did them justice in a way that didn't place them in a particular era.
Because it was a Hits! album, we didn't want them to look too much like how they do now, how they did then. We wanted something that was very generic and ageless and we weren't able to get that.
As we were getting closer to the release date we changed what we were going to do, and we decided to go for an animal.
Daniel suggested using swans just because they are quite regal. Also swans have a quite beautiful element about them and an air of mystery…
And a certain campness?
Yes! And a certain campness! [laughs]
There was a rough idea, although its quite subtle on the sleeve that the swans would be the 'King and Queen of Pop'.
And that's where it came from really and we were pleased with the results. The swans were also a distinctive element that could be used on the related single release. [Oh L'amour]
Paul - thank you for your time!
No problem!