Interview with Martin Atkins about The Museum of Post Punk and Industrial Music

Interview with Martin Atkins about The Museum of Post Punk and Industrial Music (and album covers, naturally!)

An ACHOF Special Report by Mike Goldstein

Martin Atkins (l) and Mike Goldstein (r)

Posted May the Fourth, 2023

Introduction – Why do people collect? It’s a question that has challenged marketing professionals, medical/psychological experts and many, many journalists over the years and, as such, many scientific studies have been done and theories have been proffered, and still there are many questions that remain unanswered, including “does collecting help us document the special moments of our lives?” or “can collecting help us reduce stress and increase our pleasures?”, etc. Scientists will geek out about the production of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that controls the brain’s reward and pleasure response) and a human being’s need to somehow preserve (or conserve) things that solicit fond memories of things we’re passionate about, while marketers and advertising pros in every segment of the product/service promotional world do their best to help us all collect souvenirs, memorabilia, fine art, stamps, sneakers, wine, wristwatches, fond memories of unique experiences and everything else that fulfills our needs in this area.

Where is the fine line between simply gathering a few of these desirable items and obsessively  collecting thousands of them at great cost? Each of us surely has a story…

Interview With Designer James Faulkner – Public Image Ltd’s 9 Album Cover

Interview with James Faulkner – Public Image Ltd’s 9 album cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Interview Topic – the making of the album cover artwork for Public Image Ltd’s 9, a 1989 release on the Virgin Records label

By Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

When a team is assembled to create an album cover/package, a lot of talent can be brought to the table. In larger-scale endeavors – like the ones you’d often see for big-name acts, backed by significant budgets – a team might include an art director, a designer, a photographer and/or an illustrator (sometimes, both, particularly if there were logos and lettering to be done) and, as the folks tasked with these parts of a project would often find (and want to take advantage of), new techniques, materials and tools would be brought to bear. In the 80s and 90s, as computer-aided design was integrated into a products development and production, sometimes the tools that were “state of the art” at the time were found to be challenging to use, which would either slow down and frustrate some of the players or be seen as an opportunity to experiment and come up with something never before seen. Things like the budget, the production schedule and other distractions might force folks to knuckle down and get creative or, as might be the case in the production of the cover for PiL’s 1989 release simply titled 9 (which stood for the fact that it was the band’s ninth record), to frustrate the art director and leave him with less-than-fond memories of the process and, as a result, of the people who were there to apply their skills to the project via these new technologies.