Ian Anderson:

My background was playing in bands / DJing / promoting gigs and club nights and running zines and the Arts pages (writing and layout) of Sheffield university paper Darts. Back in the day, if you wanted a flyer or poster doing, you did it yourself. I didn’t study design — this was my education… Letraset / Roaring Pens / Pantone markers and Xerox machines. Based on my background, in 1983, two years out of The University of Sheffield, I was asked to manage a new Sheffield band called Person To Person formed by ex members of early-80s gold-lamé new pop sensations ABC. The band signed to Epic Records (now Sony). Then, as now, musicians selling their souls to the music ‘industry’ sought refuge / artistic balance in the notion that they retained ‘creative control’. To this end, to keep everything in house, the band suggested I do the record covers as they liked the ‘design’ I’d done for the various events I’d been running. At this point I imagined I’d have a career in band management, or maybe as a writer — I liked playing with ‘graphics’ but it never occurred to me that it would ever mean anything more to me than rub-down letters and felt tips, and I had no idea what else it could be.

So, the ‘proper’ first cover I ever did was a mish mash of stuff I could draw on graph paper with Rotring Pens, a set of compasses and rulers, whatever Letraset came to hand, a handful of Pantone Markers and a headful of Russian Constructivism, Festival of Britain design, Ealing Comedies, Star Trek and early Face magazines.
I originally kept a few copies of the single as mementos in a personal archive (‘nice things box’) not really seeing them as ‘design’ per se. I guess what’s followed has generated interest in the origins of The Designers Republic which means there’s been a lot of interest in this cover as an artefact.