Howard Wakefield's profile

TOTAL from Joy Division to New Order

TOTAL from Joy Division to New Order

Endeavouring to capture the essence of Joy Division and New Order, both Peter Saville and Howard Wakefield agreed that typography could be the link. They agreed that the Helvetica Heavy Italic from Technique, conveyed the 'look' of New Order, however Joy Division was predominantly uppercase. By merging the two, a TOTAL
was created.

The design is a 'nod' to Run2's commercial packaging; while the out-of-register CMYK references the perils of clients printing without proofs, which now-a-days happens all too frequently…

TOTAL was initially positioned as large as it would fit on the cover, only for the band to say it had too much
white space.

However, the 'O' was the sexiest letter, the overlapping letterforms created a further Technique / Run 2 memory and funnily enough was the only letter to appear in New Order, Joy Division and TOTAL. So Howard decided that to reduce the white space, he would zoom into the kaleidoscopic 'O' and wrap the rest around.

Clients are always requesting 'make it larger', so here was an opportunity not to be missed. We love the irony that the final design is massive and out-of-register... yet beautiful.
TOTAL from Joy Division to New Order is released on 6 June 2011.

TOTAL from Joy Division to New Order
Published:

TOTAL from Joy Division to New Order

CD packaging for the first compilation of Joy Division and New Order

Published: