In addition a life as an artist, as a designer I’ve created many record covers over the years, working with bands including Elbow, Depeche Mode, Everything But The Girl, Pendulum and Scritti Politti to name a handful. Of all these great bands, the most enduring collaboration for me will be working with Cocteau Twins on Blue Bell Knoll and the now legendary Heaven or Las Vegas. Despite disbanding in 1997 the love for the band has grown exponentially year on year. So today, after months of collaborations with record label 4AD and the Marc Jacobs fashion brand in LA, the launch of a Fall 2022 capsule collection for Heaven by Marc Jacobs is released, with imagery directly influenced from the iconic Heaven or Las Vegas album artwork I created back in 1990 with photographer Andy Rumball.
This gave me the chance to take a long-awaited deep dive into the extensive archive of original artworks, proofs, pre-digital hand-created logos and album mock-ups, photography created in partnership with Andy Rumball, and visuals never before seen in public – many of which will be on show at an exhibition of my work, running from 11 November to 11 December 2022. This exhibition dedicated to Heaven or Las Vegas, at the Heaven Fairfax store in Los Angeles, coincides with the fashion range launch.
Cocteau Twins are the trio of Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, and Simon Raymonde whose sixth studio album, Heaven or Las Vegas, is widely regarded as one of the decade’s finest. Featuring ‘Cherry Coloured Funk,’ ‘Iceblink Luck’ and the album’s title track, this ethereal masterpiece has influenced countless artists since its release and continues to bewitch new fans every day, soundtracking many a life moment. A timeless and unique record, Pitchfork said of it in a rare full marks retrospective review, “pop (music) rarely sounds as transformative and as transfixing as it does here.”
The Heaven limited range – the first of its kind with this band and record – celebrates the album’s enduring appeal and the explosive colour and energy of it’s classic sleeve design.
Here are a selection of (the many) images from the HoLV archive with comments you might find useful to read alongside.
Above: Opening the original artwork files and proof bags, seeing my notes made over thirty years ago
Above left: Xeroxes from photographer Andy Rumball’s transparencies and exploratory crops for the outer and inner sleeves.
Above right: Xeroxes with hand painted ‘Cocteau Twins’ on acetate for the band name and to indicate the album title (as ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’ had yet to be confirmed at this stage).
Multiple handwritten Cocteau Twins logo experiments. I would write the name many times to get the flow in the letters in order to shape of the final script. The final logo was made up of two or three different versions, cut and pasted together before a master ‘PMT’ bromide was made
Above bottom row: The original ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’ hand writing (with the ‘g’ now missing!) created from a number of different script variations.
Above top row: PMT (Photo Mechanical Transfer or bromide) master of handwritten script logo with last minute physical letter spacing via scalpel slices and manual repositioning (long before the availability of the Mac which could now do this in a second).
Above: PMT and ‘Inter-neg’ mono print reproductions from the original HoLV and Iceblink Luck colour transparencies. These would be sent with advert artwork to the mono mags (NME, Melody Maker etc). The PMT on the left is a positional guide for the cassette roll fold. See below images to show how they were used.
Above left: Inside album sleeve markup (indicating type colour / PMT image area
Above right: The running proof from the printer matching the artwork markup.
Above: Original Heaven or Las Vegas tour merchandise. Any excuse to use that ‘rave’ day-glo green!
Above: In addition to accessing the archive, I was asked to design a special limited edition poster for the Marc Jacobs ‘Heaven’ LA exhibition opening. The prospect of revisiting this artwork to create something new after over 30 years was a real thrill, involving the recreation of all original analogue assets in a digital format, using one of the original in-store posters for reference (top).
Above: A selection of the Heaven fashion range based on the original artworks and Andy Rumball’s images.
The capsule collection will consist of a baby tee, mesh skirt, slit top, album logo hair pin, and album logo ring.
Available at marcjacobs.com, Heaven Fairfax, LA, and Dover Street Market New York, Los Angeles, and London.