Today, a lot of tasks have been taken over by robots or transferred to computers. This makes them easier to execute, more efficient and in many cases cheaper as well. “When I was young”, things were however a bit different. Many things that are now done digitally, were done by hand. Including designing artwork for albums and singles.

If you have ever wondered how this was done or what it may have looked like during the 80s, then stick around and check out the rest of this article! You will be even more pleased in case you dig Mr. Bowie!

Designing in the old days

At least until the late 80s and probably up to the mid 90s, design companies tended to design artwork for any format physically. This meant that they would cut, draw and glue pieces of art or text together onto a design board to form the final artwork. This could be done for anything, so LP’s, 7″ and 12″ singles, cassettes and CD’s, but also posters or tour books, just to give some examples. The outcome was called the production artwork or production mechanical.

It is my understanding that, once the design was completed, the board would go to the printer. By following the instructions, he created the four color process film from which the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black printing plates would be made. A mock-up was then made by using the printing plates to produce so-called proof artwork. Once approved, the actual artwork would be printed in masses, cut, folded and glued if required and sent off to shops.

It is probably needless to say that each production artwork was unique and, in most cases, only one was ever made. Many may have been thrown away over the years, so it is unknown just how many have survived decades years later. Proof artwork was made in larger quantities, though still probably 10 prints or less per test run.

I am very fortunate to own production artworks for two different David Bowie releases from the 80s. Let’s take a closer look at them in the next few chapters.

Loving The Alien, 1985

The production artwork shown in this article for both releases was designed by a company called Shoot That Tiger!. They were commissioned to create and supply artwork for many major record company artists and have even won numerous industry awards for their designs throughout their existence.

This first example is for a May 1985 Bowie single called Loving The Alien, probably my favourite Bowie 80s song. It is the 12″ vinyl picture disc edition to be precise.

The artwork was designed, as with the next entry, on a CS10 surface board. This was used by many artists for drawing and producing art back in the day. It features a very sturdy carton backing, a cover sheet and two transparent overlays inside.

The design board is rather large because both the A and B-sides were designed next to each other. Due to this, its size is 69,5 x 35,5 cm / 27,4″ x 14″.

On the front…

The front cover features a print which, I think, was a standard print for these kind of CS10 boards. The bottom right corner however contains a custom company sticker which shows the company logo and contact details. It also lists the client (EMI-America) and job (David Bowie -12-inch picture disc- “Loving The Alien” * fifth colour – silver). Based on the job description, it may very well be that they went through multiple iterations because of the reference “fifth colour”.

The front of the large CS10 design board for Loving The Alien

A close-up of the informational sticker

The inside…

When you lift the cover, you are greeted by an impressive view. A photo does not do this justice. What you see, is a full overview of both 12″ sides, complimented with notes, guides, slides and photo cut-outs (which seemingly was called a “tranny” back in the day, as seen in the second entry).

The top layer contains notes and instructions, telling you i.e. which colour to use or which part of a photo needs to be cut out and where it belongs.

The first transparent overlay. Details from the second overlay and the board are visible as well

Before I share some close-ups, let’s first share the final product with the design! This will show you what was ultimately produced and may give you a nice side-to-side comparison. The following two photos show the A and B-sides of the disc next to the (final?) design:

The A-side of the final product next to the design

The B-side of the final product next to the design

I personally think it is a thrilling view to see the source for the design of a record next to the actual product! Not to mention that this was never meant to be seen outside the four walls of the design studio.

The following two photos show a close-up of the design for the A and B-sides. Remember that you can click on each photo to see a slightly larger image which allows you to zoom in and look at the finer details.

Taped on top of the A-side design are two photo slides marked with ‘E’ and ‘F’.

‘E’ is a beautiful photo of Bowie showing his upper body and head. Just the head is used for the A-side of the disc.

‘F’ shows a still from the music video and only the right side of the photo featuring the character was ultimately used on the disc.

The B-side design is composed of some more images being ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘1’ and ‘2’. I have no idea why they did not start with ‘A’ unless they did and discarded those images down the line.

‘G’ and ‘H’ are slides which again contain stills from the music video. As with the other slides, only a small part of the full image was used for the B-side.

The two “trannies” marked with ‘1’ and ‘2’ feature some kind of art or artwork. ‘1’ is the horse image and ‘2’ shows a much larger part of some art (8 x 9 cm / 3″ x 3,5″) which is very likely taken from the back of his 1984 album Tonight.

Some close-ups showing further details

I must admit that it is quite hard to imagine what the final product may look like, just based on these rough sketches and guide lines. So hats off to those who designed it like this and were able to visualize it in their heads!

Since the top transparent layer contains notes, the following one contains the actual design. It indeed looks very bare bones.

The track listing on side B is a small sheet of white paper which has been glued on the transparent paper. Same for the credits at the bottom. The rest are just some rough sketches or contours to present the idea.

The second transparent layer plus some close-ups

The third and also final layer is drawn on the board itself. It only features the edges of the 12″ disc. However, the David Bowie logo is pasted on the A-side and the B-side contains a number of lines which are part of the design. Funny enough, the designer had to correct an error between two lines by pasting a piece of white paper on top of the error. The designer also applied a larger piece of white paper at the top end of the lines. This was probably done to even them out nicely.

The final layer, being the surface board, plus some close-ups

Day-In Day-Out, 1987

Moving forward to 1987. We see that the studio still uses the same type of design boards, though their custom company sticker has slightly changed. The main colour for the logo, company name and address is now red instead of black. There is also no reference to a client and job anymore.

The production artwork for this release is on a 37 x 38 cm / 14,5″ x 15″ CS10 surface board and the front flap has a similar design as the previous entry.

The front of the large CS10 design board for Day-In Day-Out

As you can see, this production artwork was made for Bowie’s single Day-In Day Out, another favourite of mine, which was released on the 23rd of March 1987 across various formats. This particular production artwork covers the cassette format which came in a clam-shell box.

A close-up of the informational sticker

The inside…

You know the drill by now. When you lift the cover, you again see an overview of the product’s artwork, complimented with notes, guides, slides and photo cut-outs. Unlike the previous entry, this one only has one transparent layer

The top layer also contains notes and instructions about colour-usage or where to use a particular part of an image.

The first transparent overlay. Details from the board are visible as well

There are again plenty of notes and scribbles to go through, despite the fact that the actual artwork isn’t that big as the previous 12″ disc. It is fun to see that they even had to design the print on the actual cassette which will be covered later.

This top layer furthermore contains two trannies which are being referred to as “tranny A” and “tranny B“. The one on the left is the one marked as A, the one on the right is B.

They furthermore seemed to apply similar design methods as three years prior. For instance, they did not completely fill out blocks of text with a particular colour. Instead, they applied the colour with a few strokes and added text such as “Type solid Black as seen” to indicate to use the colour black for the whole specified element.

The next four photos show some further details which can be found on the top transparent layer. I do want to highlight that, in the first photo, you will see that they initially applied the asterisk (*) in front of the text “original version featured […]” but made a note to move it up next to the text “additional production […]“.

Some close-ups showing further details

When flipping the transparent layer, you see the actual design. You however also see two very small additional transparent layers. One contains the track listing and credits for the back sleeve as shown below.

It seems that they initially wanted to center the EMI logo and company details. The final product however has these aligned to the right. This production artwork also states “Sleeve printed in England” which was changed to “Printed in England” for the final release.

The released product furthermore shows the catalogue number on the back below the barcode. This is not present on the production artwork. An oversight?

A close-up of the front and back sleeve design

Below this section, which shows the front and back, is another section featuring only text. I never paid attention to this until I was working on this feature and realized that this text is printed on the inside (or rear) of the cassette sleeve when you pull it out of the clam shell box.

The text is, as expected, identical minus one difference: the final release features an additional line at the bottom stating “Publisher: EMI Music Publ. Ltd.“.

The design for this section furthermore shows a square box, which is drawn on the top transparent layer (below tranny A). This is not present on the released design. A similar empty box can be seen in the bottom left corner on the back of the sleeve which became the barcode. Was this barcode also supposed to be printed on the inside of this sleeve?

A close-up of the inner sleeve design without and with the transparent overlay – the latter showing a placeholder for a potential barcode

The last part of this release is the cassette itself. This section contains the second small transparent overlay which is used to flip between an A and B for each side of the cassette. I guess that there was no room for assumptions!

It is again interesting to see what kind of work is involved in designing an item like a cassette as they had to take every detail into consideration.

The small green rectangular box would be filled with the Dolby System logo and the catalogue number, TC EA 230, would end up on two lines on the released cassette (with TC EA on line #1 and 230 on line #2).

A close-up of the inner sleeve design

Since this production artwork has a few differences (text aligned differently and missing text) when compared to the final release, I wonder whether another production artwork was made to deal with those changes. Or were they made while creating the mock-up?

See if you can spot the differences yourself by comparing the final product with the production artwork through the next three photos:

End of an era

I do not know how much longer studios continued with designing artwork this way. Though I can imagine that more and more studios went digital in the 90s when computers became more powerful, easier to use and affordable.

No matter how convenient designing digitally may be, you will not have these great artifacts anymore. Nor will it give outsiders the opportunity to gain some insight into the design process. If you ever find some production artwork, or even proof artwork, and the price is affordable, don’t think twice and grab it!

I again had a great time working on this feature and am happy to share it with the rest of the world. The arguably best thing was the discovery of a part of the Day-In Day-Out cassette single artwork, “hidden” on the inside or rear of the sleeve. It is beyond me how I could have missed this all these years, as it’s been in my collection since 2014!