My first job for Ninja Tune in 1994 was redesigning their logo into what became the classic face of the label. Over the years it has changed, most notably in 2000 when the pose changed and the jumping Ninja finally landed and threw the record it had been brandishing all those years.
Logos for the ‘Motion’, ‘Every Day’ and ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ albums.
Logos for all Amon’s releases up until ‘Foley Room’.
I’ve worked with The Herbaliser since their first record in 1994 and produced all manner of logos and sleeves for them, some more successful than others. Here are some of my favourites.
I took the Franklin Extra Condensed font and the knife & fork from the original ‘Jazz Brakes’ LP cover designs and forged the two into a more dynamic logo.
Created for the ‘U.S.S.R.- The Art of Listening’ LP
Various ideas for logos for the band, mostly based of a chemistry theme, probably too tricky to be really good logos.
I did a load of logos for Dynamic Syncopation – then trimming their name to DSP – both for the group and the sub-label DSP records. The single release was called ‘Trifeasaurus Rex’ so I made the title into the silhouette of a Tyrannosaurus but they weren’t into it.
I was sharing a flat with my friend David Vallade (amongst others) and we both knew Mixmaster Morris as he used to live nearby and come and play at our Telepathic Fish parties. When Morris signed to Ninja he asked for David to design the cover as he had previously seen his artwork on various releases for MLO, Worm Interface and Reflective and had had him paint his bathroom from floor to ceiling with his illustrations.
As I was doing 99% of the Ninja artwork at the time and rated Morris highly as a DJ I obviously wanted a crack at it too so we both did something. Mine was more graphic and mainly centered around a triple ‘M’ logo I’d already designed in a few different versions that Morris liked. Here’s what I had in mind although it only got so far because it became obvious that Morris wanted David to do it so I didn’t push on … David’s version with the serrated ‘roach filters’ card cover for the CD single is much more exciting.
This sadly never got made but was intended to be printed and used as the paper inner on all future Jazz Fudge releases. It comes from the designs for the Isolationist LP in style and featured a discography up until that point plus other miscellaneous audiophile info.
Also the ‘Russian JFR swirl’ logo: this was an attempt to create a logo like the Phillips 21st Century series records had that would be present on each release and indicate a kind of experimental nature and hark to the music concréte side of the label.
Back in the early 90’s I did a fanzine with my housemates (the beginnings of Openmind actually) called ‘MindFood’ which focused on ambient and electronic music. It only got to 4 issues but in that time we featured a cookery recipe from Richard D.James, features on Irdial and Scanner and an interview with Mike Paradinas aka Mu-ziq / Tusken Raiders / Jake Slazenger etc.
I went to his house in Wimbledon (I think) shortly after he had released ‘Tango N Vectif’ and ‘Bluff Limbo’, did a short interview and took some pictures of his set up and general bedroom/studio. I cut these up and made a montage for the fanzine and reused the images for this cover that I knocked up on spec for Clear’s second release. I’d gotten the Tusken Raiders tag lettering from Hal, who did their general layout, and did an opposite to their first release – the Jedi Knights – an all black cover with white lettering instead of the other way around. The ‘Bantha Trax’ lettering was supposed to look like tracks made in sand and I was pretty pleased with it overall but they had their own ideas.
Also I did my own version of the Clear graffiti lettering logo, this was used when I laid out Gescom‘s ‘Machines Our Parents Used’ release for the label. Mike P released …