Jamie Reid

1. What it is — a Suburban Press sticker, screenprint on paper with an adhesive back, winter 1973–74 (the miners' strike, the government's electricity-saving campaign). V&A: counter-propaganda — instead of saving energy as the government asks, it calls for „switching on something" for the miners. The dimension in the record (58 × 76 cm) does not match a sticker.
2. Composition — a square; in the middle a smiling light-bulb face (halftone), around it a black star-shaped blotch („explosion" of light); text in a ring around the entire figure, reads in a circle: SWITCH ON SOMETHING top right, FOR THE MINERS bottom left. The eye enters the smile, then goes around the circle — no beginning or end, like a badge.
3. Colour — black and white, one screen colour. The halftone of the face against a solid black blotch: two tones out of one colour.
4. Typography — bold grotesque (sans serif) bent around the circle. Not confirmed whether the setting is Letraset or cut. This is the only work in the series with setting that has no ransom-note typeface — in 1973. letters were still bought, when the slogan needed to look like an official campaign it was subverting.
5. Message — the government's appeal turned inside out: the sentence structure stays official, the verb reverses. Three seconds: light bulb + smile = something cheerful about electricity. Five metres: the sticker is small — it doesn't work at five metres, it works at half a metre on a lamppost, in a toilet, in a shop window.
6. Why exactly this way — a sticker is the only medium that carries its own distribution: print a hundred copies, the audience sticks them up. The circle is the form of a badge/seal — it looks official, so it passes as part of the campaign it's attacking.
7. What would kill it — an angry expression on the light bulb. The smile is the reason it works: the government pleads, the sticker grins.

Principles: Slogan in a new context The artefact carries distribution Cheap technique as language To verify against the image: the actual dimensions of the sticker; whether the text is Letraset or cut.

1. What it is — a small banner, 16 × 48 cm, screenprint, black and white. V&A: Reid's second logo design, first used on a flyer for a concert at the 100 Club, 31.8.1976.
2. Composition — a black rectangle with white cut-out letters inside. The letters are not on a baseline, but shifted and rotated: S-e-X goes capital-lowercase-capital, P-i-S-T-O-L-S has a lowercase letter shifted in the middle. The rectangle is not regular — the edges are cut by hand, the top and bottom edges are not parallel.
3. Colour — inversion: white letter on a black field. On the wall and on the sleeve the logo reads as a hole in the paper, not as lettering.
4. Typography — every letter comes from a different source: different cuts, sizes, angles. That is the whole identity decision — the logo isn't a typeface but a procedure, so it can be cut out again each time and still stays recognisable.
5. Message — ransom: someone has taken the name and is holding it hostage. Three-second reading: yes. Five-metre distance: yes — the black block with white blots of letter rhythm is recognisable even when it can't be read.
6. Why exactly this way — there was no money for typesetting; and even if there had been, typesetting would have given a band that looks like all the others. Cut letters carry the threat before they're even read.
7. What would kill it — aligning the letters to a baseline. The moment the letters sit on a line, it becomes a font — and a font can be bought.

Principles: Found letter carries its origin Series as identity To verify against the image: Not verified whether the letters are from newspapers or hand-cut from white paper. In this reproduction they look cut from solid white paper, not from newspaper headlines.

1. What it is — a promotional poster for EMI, November 1976; V&A screenprint 71 × 98 cm, MoMA the same motif as a lithograph 43.2 × 61.6 cm (two editions, two techniques — not to be confused).
2. Composition — a photograph of a torn flag, ripped into five or six pieces, rejoined with safety pins; in the middle two white labels with the title, held by metal office clips; the band's name on a black label below. The flag takes up ~75 % of the white sheet, slightly rotated. At the bottom, small: FIRST SINGLE · EMI 2566. The flag's diagonals lead to the centre, where the labels are — Reid uses the Union Jack's composition (all lines converging in the middle) as a ready-made focus system.
3. Colour — red and blue of the flag, plus the grey tones of the photograph (folds, shadows of the pins). The flag isn't drawn but photographed — hence it has material, dirt and shadow. The white sheet around it is a fourth „colour" and holds the dirty object like an exhibit.
4. Typography — the title in a ransom-note typeface on white labels; the labels are physically glued and fastened with clips — the typography is an object held in place, not a layer. The catalogue data in typewriter lettering (class).
5. Message — the state torn and patched with safety pins (which, at the same moment, are a fashion mark of punk). Three seconds: flag + torn = yes. Five metres: the flag is recognisable, the labels aren't — but they don't need to be.
6. Why exactly this way — one operation: tear it, then document the repair. It isn't a drawing of a torn flag but a photograph of a real act — evidence, not illustration.
7. What would kill it — a vector flag with a „tear effect". The entire point of the work is that someone actually did this with their hands.

Principles: Photograph is the layout One operation per piece Détournement of the official image To verify against the image: who photographed the flag is not stated in the record. Not confirmed whether the MoMA lithograph is the same proportions or cropped.

1. What it is — poster and single sleeve, Virgin, 27.5.1977 — a week before the Silver Jubilee. Offset (V&A), MoMA lithograph 69.9 × 100.3 cm, sleeve 17.5 × 17.5 cm (NPG). The original photograph is by Peter Grugeon, official jubilee portrait (NPG and RCT, RCIN 2148924). Some sources (AnOther, Eye, Clash) list Cecil Beaton as the photographer — incorrect. RCT states that Reid mirrored the photograph („flipped"). Print workers refused to run it; the BBC banned the song; Woolworths and W.H. Smith refused to stock it; #2 on the chart (NPG).
2. Composition — the whole format is a Union Jack with painted/brushed edges to the stripes (the flag as hand-painted, not geometric); in the centre an oval — the form of a cameo, a postage stamp, a coin — with a high-contrast portrait; a black band across the eyes reading GOD save THE QUEEN, a band across the mouth reading SeX PiSTOLS. The flag's diagonals lead into the middle; the oval is the only rounded shape so the eye finds it immediately.
3. Colour — red, blue, black, white paper. The portrait is pure black-and-white (no mid-tones — lith contrast), so it stands out against the flag as if cut out. The colour belongs entirely to the state; the queen has no colour — a document, not a picture.
4. Typography — ransom-note lettering on two bands. The anthem title over the eyes, the band's name over the mouth: the anthem shuts her eyes, the band shuts her mouth. The letterforms vary cut to cut, the band is a physical strip of paper with an edge.
5. Message — the text sits exactly where the gaze and speech are. At three seconds: you recognise the queen and see she's been "censored". At five metres: the oval and the flag read without a single word. That's why it was banned: it works for the illiterate too.
6. Why exactly this way — two found sources (the official portrait and tabloid lettering), one operation (cover up). Nothing is drawn. The state supplied the image, the tabloid supplied the letters, the scissors supplied the politics. The oval isn't decoration but a form the state uses for itself (stamp, coin) — Reid takes that packaging too.
7. What would kill it — a band across the forehead instead of the eyes. Or shifted 1 cm higher: then it reads as "a headline above the portrait", not a blindfold.

Principles: Text where the gaze was Détournement of the official image One operation per piece Slogan in a new context To verify against the image: there's a version with a safety pin through the lips and swastikas in the eyes (AnOther, Eye — other variants of the same operation); it's not confirmed where each was published. The V&A dimensions (60 × 38 portrait orientation?) don't match the landscape image.

1. What it is — the original paste-up for the Virgin VS184 promotional poster, July 1977: artboard with a yellow cover sheet, tracing paper, beneath it a collage — photocopy, pencil, glue; 13 cm wide. The bus image is not Reid's: David Jacobs (Point-Blank!, San Francisco) 1973 — a press photograph of a GMC bus, the negative flipped, Letraset lettering NOWHERE / BOREDOM / ALIENATION; one bus has the GMC logo upside down because of the mirroring (Flashbak). Reid's gallery claims Reid made it in 1972 and gave it to Point-Blank; Jacobs denies this. Here it's treated as a found image.
2. Composition — the design is small, centred on a large empty sheet of artboard, with pencil cutting lines drawn in. Two buses facing each other (mirrored), between them a column of text: SeX PiSTOLS on top, NEW SINGLE ON VIRGIN RECORDS VS184 in the middle, pretty vacant below as white on a black band. Symmetry around the vertical axis sends the two identical buses to two "nowheres".
3. Colour — black and white on greyish card. Colour arrives only in application: the badge has a green background and blue text (V&A).
4. Typography — the band's name and the title in ransom-note lettering; the catalogue line in typewriter face. Three registers: cut-out / typed / Letraset on the bus boards, taken from someone else's material.
5. Message — two buses, two destinations, both nothing. At three seconds you read the buses and the word. At five metres it only reads once enlarged by process camera to poster size; the original is palm-sized and that gap doesn't exist there.
6. Why exactly this way — this sheet shows Reid's whole production system: a postcard-sized collage, a process camera enlarging it 5–8×, every cut edge and grain of the copy growing with it. That's why the posters look like they have "rough" letters — they're not rough, just enlarged.
7. What would kill it — working at full size from the start. The enlargement is the style.

Principles: Visible process as invitation Series as identity To verify against the image: Point-Blank! pamphlet Space Travel 1973 — no copy found online; the rejected Virgin bus poster appears in Up They Rise 1987.

1. What it is — promotional poster, Virgin VS191, October 1977; lithograph 82 × 108 cm. V&A: a photograph of a packed beach taken from a Situationist publication. MoMA dates its lithograph 1976 — the single is from 1977; the V&A year stands.
2. Composition — a black frame; inside, a beach photograph with a torn top edge (white showing through the tear); the crowd fills everything, no horizon, no sky — just the pattern of people, deckchairs and parasols. The title top left in yellow, the band's name bottom right in yellow — a reading diagonal across the whole crowd. In the crowd, small white speech bubbles carry lyric lines. Bottom left a small slogan KEEP WARM THIS WINTER — MAKE TROUBLE (an old Suburban Press sticker, recycled).
3. Colour — two colours: black (the photograph in lith contrast + the frame) and yellow (the text). Yellow appears in only four places; the photograph has none — so yellow works as a marker over the black-and-white document.
4. Typography — ransom-note lettering in yellow for the two large headlines; the lyric lines in a small grotesque (sans serif) class; the slogan in two registers. The speech bubbles turn the documentary photograph into a comic strip — the crowd "speaks" the song's lyrics.
5. Message — a holiday as mass incarceration; the song title as a tourism ad. At five metres: a black block, a yellow title, the texture of the crowd — reads like a beach advert. At half a metre: the speech bubbles and the slogan say the opposite. Two audiences, two messages.
6. Why exactly this way — a Situationist image (the spectacle of holidays) taken literally and simply signed; Reid adds text, doesn't alter the image. The torn edge at the top is the only physical gesture — it shows the image is a piece of paper, not a window.
7. What would kill it — a clean cut instead of the torn edge, or a third colour. Or lyrics set larger: then the distinction between the two reading distances disappears.

Principles: Two reading distances Slogan in a new context Photograph is the layout To verify against the image: which Situationist publication — not established, the V&A doesn't name it. The single's sleeve is a different work (a Belgian tourist brochure as comic strip) — not to be confused with this poster.

1. What it is — LP sleeve, Virgin, 28.10.1977. Original artwork (V&A, with John Varnom): paper collage on card, 58 × 76 cm, black type on white — colour was added only at the printing stage. V&A: "fluorescent colours and title were chosen to be noticed and to offend." UK: yellow + pink; North America: green + purple (PGDA/Louder). An obscenity trial in Nottingham — acquitted, "bollocks" being an Old English church term (V&A).
2. Composition — a square, a yellow field; at the top two lines, NEVER MIND / THE BOLLOCKS, centred, below it small type reading HERE'S THE, then a pink BAND at an angle (~10°) running off both edges carrying the cut-out SeX PiSTOLS. Thirds: the top third is type, the middle empty, the bottom a band. No image. The angled band is the only "event" — everything else is horizontal, so the band looks like a sticker stuck over a finished sleeve.
3. Colour — two fluorescent colours that don't sit well together, plus black. The yellow and pink are the same brightness so they vibrate at the edge — the edge of the band can't be looked at calmly. The colours were the cheapest possible loud colours (two-colour fluo offset), but chosen here to hurt.
4. Typography — the title: a bold condensed serif, typeset (the first time a purchased typeface was used for the large word); HERE'S THE: a condensed grotesque (sans serif); SeX PiSTOLS: cut-out letters. Three registers deliberately combined without any hierarchy of cuts — the type looks like a cheap newspaper ad, the band like vandalism over it. The specific typeface not confirmed. Do not name it.
5. Message — a swear word in the title, type set like a sale advert. At three seconds: yes. At five metres: a yellow square with a pink diagonal — recognisable as a sign even without the words.
6. Why exactly this way — McLaren (Louder Sound): "The only real thing about Never Mind The Bollocks was that it had to look ugly. We came up with the ugliest cover we could think of; that in a sense would attack the idea of super-graphics. I wanted to make ugliness beautiful." PGDA attributes that quote to Reid — incorrectly. Reid (Louder): the sleeve was meant to "articulate ideas… anti-establishment and quite theoretical" — while at the same time dismissing it as "cheap hype".
7. What would kill it — a single photograph of the band. Or the band set straight. Or a "nice" typeface. The ugliness is deliberate and must be total — half-ugly looks like a mistake.

Principles: Deliberate ugliness as attack Series as identity Found letter carries its origin To verify against the image: which typeface the title is; whether the back cover had the same system; Varnom's share in the artwork.

1. What it is — process-camera print (Better Badges) for an offset plate, 40,5 × 50,8 cm. The V&A catalogues it both as artwork for the inner sleeve of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979) and as the advertisement „Never Mind the Sex Pistols Here's the Sex Pistols — You made it Britain's number one album choice!" The date in the record is 1977; the album is from 1979.
2. Composition — the same TEMPLATE as in 07: title in two lines at the top, HERE'S THE, then a diagonal strip with cut-out SeX PiSTOLS; below, typewritten, the ad line; at the bottom a small mark. Vertical format, text in the top two-thirds, bottom third empty.
3. Colour — black and white (plate print); colour comes only in printing.
4. Typography — the same narrow serif + grotesque (sans serif) + cut-out letters. Difference from 07: the text is replaced — „the bollocks" becomes „the Sex Pistols". The system is solid enough to parody itself a year or two later.
5. Message — the band in its own advertisement mocks its own album and its audience („you made it number one"). Recognisable in three seconds, and at five metres the same.
6. Why exactly this way — when the identity IS the TEMPLATE (layout + three type registers), a new message costs one hour of work. This is proof that 07 was a system, not a single sleeve.
7. What would kill it — changing the layout. The whole joke is that everything is the same.

Principles: Series as identity Visible process as invitation To verify against the image: the place of publication is not confirmed — the V&A lists both the inner sleeve and the print advertisement as possibilities.