Peter Saville

1. What it is — LP sleeve, Factory FACT 10, 1979; offset on textured card (Saville: printed on „textured card“ for the first pressing); printer Garrod and Lofthouse; 30.5 × 30.5 cm. The image is a plot of successive radio pulses from pulsar CP 1919 — Harold D. Craft Jr., Cornell dissertation 1970, Arecibo, 318 MHz; published in Scientific American 1/1971 (white on cyan) and in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy (1977), where Sumner (or Morris — Wikipedia leaves both) found it. Saville INVERTED the image from black-on-white to white-on-black, against the band's wishes: „I was afraid it might look a little cheap. I was convinced that it was just sexier in black.“ Inner sleeve: photograph of a hand on a door — Ralph Gibson, Hand Through a Doorway, used without knowing whose it was.
2. Composition — (v2, V&A image of the whole set) The plot is SMALL: in the screenshot it takes up ~18% of the sleeve's width, centred (~50%, ~50%). It's not a poster but a stamp — the eye doesn't „enter“ the image, it approaches the object. The rest is a black surface with card texture; that emptiness is 80% of the work. On the inner sleeve the same move in white: a small photograph in the middle.
3. Colour — two: black ground and white line. Saville himself says black was chosen for the CONTENT of the image (a signal from space) — colour as argument, not taste. The card texture works as a third tone under light.
4. Typography — front: NOT ONE letter. No band name, no title, no catalogue number (Eye blog: he himself asked for and got permission to leave them out — „a cover I just wanted for myself“). Back: title and details small, white, centred (V&A inscriptions). Typeface on the back not confirmed.
5. Message — At three seconds: a black object with white „mountains“. At five metres: nothing — and that's the intent; the sleeve doesn't sell, it asks you to come closer. The test passes in reverse of advertising: the less it says, the more it's remembered. Today the most reproduced British sleeve of all.
6. Why exactly this way — Factory without a brief or a budget; a debut album that, commercially, „must“ have a name — and doesn't. The constraint that shaped it was the absence of constraint: with no client demanding a logotype, all that's left is what Saville WANTED to see. And a found image: he didn't make it, he only set its colour, size, ground, and silence.
7. What would kill it — the band's name in the top left corner, in any typeface. Or the plot enlarged to 60% of the sleeve: it would become illustration, it would stop being an object.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec (borderline case: one image, ZERO words) jedna-operacija-po-radu (invert) oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo podloga-nosi-polovinu To verify against the image: exact percentage of the plot on the sleeve (measured from a photograph of the whole set at an angle); whether the black is printed or the card itself is dyed.

1. What it is — LP cover, Factory FACT 25, 1980; offset (MoMA: lithograph), 31.4 × 31.4 cm. Design Saville and Martyn Atkins; photograph Bernard Pierre Wolff — tomb of the Appiani family (sculptor Demetrio Paernio) at the Staglieno cemetery in Genoa (Louder Than War, Post-Punk). MoMA text: when the band was asked what was in the studio, „out came Pierre Wolff, and images of tombs … because I think they look trendy“; Curtis killed himself before release — Saville: „we've got a tomb on the cover of the album!“.
2. Composition — (v2, MoMA) Cream ground; thin double rule frame inset ~8% from the edge; title ·CLOSER· centred at ~22% of height; photograph — a rectangle ~76% of width, from ~33% to ~88% of height — in the lower two-thirds. Three zones: empty, word, image. The eye enters on the word, drops to the image, stops on the figure kneeling right. A classic book title page, not a record cover.
3. Colour — two: cream card and black (photograph in warm monochrome). Not a single "colour". Cream instead of white is a decision about age: the object looks as if printed in 1880.
4. Typography — Spaced roman capitals with interpuncts (·CLOSER·) — typeface NOT CONFIRMED, not in Fonts In Use; MoMA says only "neoclassical style of typography". The interpunct (dot between words) is a quote from Roman inscriptions — the tomb and the letterform from the same tradition.
5. Message — Saville, literally: the graphic is "purely historical, but the totality is a modern mix" — neoclassicism wrapped "around a twentieth-century piece of vinyl, on which is the sound and language of 1980". At three seconds: an old book. At five metres: a cream square with a dark rectangle. The message is not in the image but in the GAP between the image and the content.
6. Why exactly this way — a found photograph that already has its composition (Wolff), so the design only chooses the frame, the typeface, and the paper. Constraint: two authors (Atkins) and an image that must not be "processed" — hence the frame as the only gesture.
7. What would kill it — the photograph full-bleed without a frame: it would become a "gothic" cover, losing the distance of a book. Or a white ground instead of cream.

Principles: raskorak-slike-i-sadrzaja istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal (WEAK case: both quotations — the tomb sculpture and the roman capitals — from the same tradition; the "two unrelated sources" test fails, the tag stands only as evidence of the method, not as confirmation) To verify against the image: whether the frame is double or a single thicker rule; the exact position of the title; whether Atkins had a share in the typography (undocumented).

1. What it is — 12-inch single, Factory FAC 23, 1980; offset, printed in France (France Imprimerie; inscription "Virgin France"). Front cover: Wolff's photograph of an angel from the Ribaudo tomb (Onorato Toso, c. 1910), same cemetery Staglieno (Louder Than War). The V&A IIIF image 2026PT3183 shows the BACK.
2. Composition — (v2, back) Black surface, thin light frame inset ~6%, ·JOY DIVISION· centred at ~22% of height, the catalogue line "FAC XXIII XII A FACTORY RECORDS PRODUCT" at ~85%, a small print line below. Same scheme as Closer in negative: empty — word — empty — data. Front cover (per literature): the angel photograph in the same frame.
3. Colour — (back) black and cream-grey line; a pair with Closer: cream/black inverted.
4. Typography — the same class of spaced capitals with an interpunct; the catalogue number in ROMAN numerals — Factory number 23 becomes an inscription on a monument. Typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — the song title does NOT appear in large type on the front cover (V&A inscriptions list the band name, title and number small). An angel instead of the title: a gap between the image (monument) and the content (pop single, no. 13 on the chart).
6. Why exactly this way — a series: Closer and this single work as a PAIR from the same Wolff session and the same typographic shelf; once the mode is set (cream/black, frame, capitals) it is repeated in a reversed tonal key — Armin Hofmann Stadttheater logic.
7. What would kill it — the song title large over the angel. Or arabic numerals.

Principles: raskorak-slike-i-sadrzaja oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo To verify against the image: the front cover has not been seen in this session — the framing of the angel, whether there is a frame; V&A 58 × 76 is the measurement of the set, not the cover.

1. What it is — LP cover, OMD's debut, 1980; die-cut cover, Saville + Ben Kelly. V&A: publisher Dindisc (correct — OMD was Dindisc DID 2), MoMA says "Factory Records" — an error or a mix-up with the FAC 6 single Electricity; 30.5 × 30.5 cm.
2. Composition — (v2, MoMA) Blue surface; a grid of 12 × 11 diagonal CUTS (slanted slits at ~45°) through which the orange inner sleeve shows; in the upper right corner a small orange sticker with the band name. The whole cover is one repeated module — Kelly's perforated industrial panel transposed into card. The eye doesn't enter anywhere: no figure, no centre; the sticker is the only "error" in the grid and therefore the only place the eye lands on.
3. Colour — two, but NOT on the same sheet: blue is the cover, orange is the inner sleeve seen through the holes. The colour comes from the cut, not from print. The V&A physical description says "orange and black" — there are several variants of the inner sleeve (see Notes on sources).
4. Typography — only the sticker: the band name in a grotesque (sans serif), white on orange; typeface not confirmed. The name is a STICKER, hence temporary — the cover would work even without it.
5. Message — an industrial object (grating, ventilation) instead of a band image; at three seconds: a blue board with holes; at five metres: a texture. The message is haptic — the cover is HELD, fingers pass through the holes.
6. Why exactly this way — Kelly (architect) brings the material, Saville the rules: module, layout, sticker. Constraint: die-cutting is expensive — so the whole budget went into the cut, not the printing. The same pattern as Blue Monday three years later.
7. What would kill it — printed diagonals instead of cut ones. Or a band photograph in the centre.

Principles: nadjeni-predmet-kao-rijec podloga-nosi-polovinu oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo To verify against the image: the exact number of slits; whether the edges of the slits are rounded; which colour the inner sleeve is in which variant (V&A "orange and black" / MoMA blue).

1. What it is — LP cover, Factory FACT 50, November 1981; offset; UK edition light blue with dark blue drawing, US edition white with maroon (Fonts In Use). Source: a poster by Fortunato Depero for the exhibition Futurismo Trentino, Rovereto 1932 — the Depero museum today displays the original next to Saville's cover (Haslam).
2. Composition — (v2, PGDA) Square; central block ~44% of width (x ≈ 28–72%), from ~20% to ~80% of height. Top: three horizontal bands with a vertical stem left = letter F; bottom: stem left + band right = letter L; between them, three lines of the text "NEW ORDER / FACT. 50 1981 / MOVEMENT" in dark blue bands; two dots right (top and bottom) close the composition like punctuation. The eye reads from the top: F → text → L. Everything is centred, but internal asymmetry (stems left, dots right) keeps the tension.
3. Colour — two: light blue ground and dark blue — one hue in two tones, with no warm/cool contrast. The band chose the blue for the UK (Vinyl Factory).
4. Typography — Elegant-Grotesk, confirmed (Fonts In Use); cassettes Kabel Black / Univers. Letters are inscribed into bands of the same weight as the geometry — text and drawing are one material, as in Depero.
5. Message — Futurism quoted verbatim, with a shift in the MEANING of the letters: F = Factory, L = roman 50 = FACT 50. Saville: better to quote Futurism literally than to awkwardly parody it. At three seconds: a poster from 1932. At five metres: two blue stripes with text. The audience read irony into it (a band accused of a neo-fascist name taking up Futurist graphics — a comment on Fonts In Use).
6. Why exactly this way — the first album after Curtis's death, no face, no photograph; it needed a language that was "neutral" yet charged — history instead of feeling. The catalogue number as the CONTENT of the cover (L = 50) is pure Factory: the number has the status of a work.
7. What would kill it — adding a third colour or a photograph; or the letter F in a different typeface from the band.

Principles: istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal (one source quoted + the Factory number as second material — a borderline case, closer to homage) raskorak-slike-i-sadrzaja To verify against the image: whether the blue tone of the cover matches the PGDA reproduction (Vinyl Factory sketch); the exact proportions of the block.

1. What it is — LP sleeve, Factory FACT 75, 1983; colour offset lithograph (V&A); MoMA "lithograph", 30.5 × 30.5 cm; Saville / PSA, after the painting by Henri Fantin-Latour A Basket of Roses (1890, National Gallery) — found as a POSTCARD in a museum shop (Design Museum, Vinyl Factory). The colour handled with Brett Wickens: a 26-segment wheel and concentric colour rings on the back is the key to letters and numbers 1–9 (greg.org).
2. Composition — (v2, V&A) The image runs to the edge, no frame — the whole front is the reproduction. The only addition: a vertical strip of six small colour squares in the top right corner, ~4% width, from ~5% to ~32% height — encoding FACT 75. The basket of roses in the centre (~50%, 45%), the dark rose upper left (~35%, 22%) gives a diagonal toward the code strip. The eye enters on the roses, sees the code only second.
3. Colour — the palette is Fantin-Latour's (grey background, pink, cream, maroon) + PURE process colours in the code (cyan, green, yellow, purple). Two colour registers on the same sheet: 1890 painting pigment / 1983 CMYK chart — each code colour has a defined CMYK value (greg.org). That's the whole argument of the sleeve, carried out through colour.
4. Typography — NOT A SINGLE letter on the front. V&A curator: "Saville has wilfully omitted type from the sleeve to intensify the presence of the fine art quotation". Text exists, but as colour — a cipher instead of typesetting.
5. Message — V&A: "a sedate image which conflicts with the unsettling title and the austere modernity of the music"; Saville: the decoder alongside the classical image speaks of how "power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives". At three seconds: a bouquet of roses. From five metres: a painting reproduction. The message is 100% in mismatch — a sleeve for synthetic pop 1983 that looks like an auction catalogue.
6. Why exactly this way — a found image nothing should be added to; the only "permitted" intervention is the information the law and the catalogue require — so it's encoded. Constraint: Factory with no brief, Saville alone decides what is seen. And: "I had the opportunity to make the kind of objects I wanted to see in my life."
7. What would kill it — the band's name in any typeface over the roses. Or the code enlarged into a band across the whole edge (as in Blue Monday) — here it must stay small to remain a secret.

Principles: istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal (two unrelated sources: 1890 painting + industrial colour chart — the test passes) sifra-umjesto-teksta program-umjesto-artefakta (the code generates any title) raskorak-slike-i-sadrzaja oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo jedna-operacija-po-radu (add the cipher, nothing else) To verify against the image: exact number of squares in the strip and their colours (from screenshots six, but small); the back with the colour wheel was not seen in this session.

1. What it is — 12-inch single, Factory FAC 73, March 1983; die-cut and printed card with an inner silver sleeve (SMG record); Saville + Brett Wickens; replica of a 5.25-inch floppy disk — Design Museum: he made it "as a replica" since he'd seen a floppy disk for the first time. The text "FAC 73 BLUE MONDAY AND / THE BEACH NEW ORDER" exists only as a colour code along the edge (SMG, greg.org). The best-selling 12-inch single ever; the story that the sleeve cost more than the revenue: Wilson "5p per sleeve" — Saville: "I am so bored with this story", PSA invoiced £538.20 (Wikipedia with sources); later pressings PRINT the silver instead of die-cutting it; the 1988 7-inch (V&A E.2262-1990) a plain sleeve, photograph by Trevor Key.
2. Composition — (v2, PGDA) A black surface; a large circle (the floppy disk's spindle hole) centred at ~(45%, 40%), diameter ~27% of width, through which the silver inner sleeve shows; below it, a vertical slot for the read head ~(50%, 68–85%) and a small notch to the right ~(60%, 62%). Along the right edge: a colour code band the full height, ~4% width. The composition is NOT composed — it's the geometry of an industrial object 1:1, enlarged from 13.3 cm to 30.5 cm.
3. Colour — black + silver (through the holes, material not pigment) + the code spectrum on the edge. The same trick as OMD: colour is achieved through DIE-CUTTING. The code is the only pigment.
4. Typography — none. All text is code; the key is on another product (the PCL back cover) — the buyer has to have both. Wickens' share in the code is confirmed (greg.org, Wikipedia).
5. Message — a pop song as SOFTWARE: the sleeve says "this is data, not a record". At three seconds: a floppy disk. From five metres: a black square with a silver circle. The message is in the object, not the image — Vinyl Factory: functional computer design elevated to the status of art.
6. Why exactly this way — a found object + a single operation (enlarge to record format); Saville, because of the deadline, sent it straight to the printer, without the band or the label (Vinyl Factory). The constraint that shaped it: none — and that's why the cost myth persists: when no one says "expensive", the die-cutting and silver get through.
7. What would kill it — a printed silver circle instead of the hole (which is exactly what later pressings did — and the sleeve became a picture of a floppy disk, not a floppy disk). Or the title spelled out in letters.

Principles: nadjeni-predmet-kao-rijec sifra-umjesto-teksta program-umjesto-artefakta podloga-nosi-polovinu oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo jedna-operacija-po-radu (enlarge) To verify against the image: the PGDA reproduction is probably a LATER pressing (silver printed?) — to verify against a copy with a visible die-cut; the exact colours of the code on the edge.

1. What it is — Poster for the 12-inch single Fine Time from the album Technique, Factory 1989; offset (MoMA: lithograph), 85.7 × 58.4 cm; Saville + Trevor Key (photographer). The only VERTICAL format among the analysed works.
2. Composition — (v2, MoMA) Black surface of the poster; square image (single cover) in the upper part, ~90% of width, from ~5% to ~52% height: yellow background across which capsules are scattered (purple-magenta, with white "halo" shadows) with no order; below, at ~63%, the "Neworder" logotype in a serif roman with an italic o; at ~70% two lines of text (title, format, "from the Lp Technique"); right at the bottom a small line. Structure: image-square + text plate = record cover extended downward. The eye enters on the yellow, falls on the logotype, goes no further.
3. Colour — four: black (poster), yellow (image background), purple-magenta (capsules), white (halo, text). Warm inside the image, cold-black around it: the image "glows" like a screen in the dark.
4. Typography — logotype: serif roman, one italic letter mid-word — typeface not confirmed (not in Fonts In Use); accompanying text in a grotesque (sans serif), small point size. Classical roman for an acid-house single = the same mismatch as Fantin-Latour.
5. Message — capsules on yellow (reading: pills; the 1989 context reads itself, but no source used confirms this as intent — remains provjeriti). At three seconds: colourful pills. From five metres: a yellow square on black — the poster works like a lit-up advert.
6. Why exactly this way — the poster is derived from the cover: the square isn't cropped, a black plate is simply placed underneath and text added; the identity of the Technique era (logotype with italic o) carries everything. Constraint: single campaign, the text has to exist — so it's pushed below the image, not over it.
7. What would kill it — text over the yellow; or a white poster background instead of black.

Principles: raskorak-slike-i-sadrzaja podloga-nosi-polovinu (a black plane as a ground that carries the image) To verify against the image: what exactly the objects in the image are (Key's photograph of capsules or a graphic?); the logotype's typeface; whether the square is identical to the single's sleeve.