All Access

Job no:81378-5 Title : RP_All Access (New PB Verdions) Client : Pro-vision

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175 Size : 203.2(w)254(h)mm Co : M6 (mac J)

Dept : DTP D/O : 22.10.05 (Job no:000000 D/O : 00.00.04 Co: CM0)

5th Black

p83

B

orn in 1959 in South London, Paul White grew up the youngest of six children.

Before he was old enough to enter elementary school, his parents moved the

family to Crawley, a new overspill town in West Sussex. He remembers “living

in a house surrounded by the music of older siblings—one brother a mod, another

a rocker. I became obsessed with music and subculture. At the age of nine, I decided

I wanted to design record covers for a living.” White was particularly taken with the

designs of Hipgnosis and London designer Barney Bubbles, who brought Russian

constructivism and futurism to post-punk imagery. His influence on White’s aesthetics

is profound and particularly visible in his early design work.

Academically average, partially dyslexic, “but good at art,” White navigated the British

public school system and entered art college at age seventeen. After four years

of studying graphics and illustration at West Sussex College of Design on the south

coast of England, he moved to West Hampstead in North West London, where he

still lives today. He struggled to find freelance work but eventually generated enough

business to rent a studio space, giving himself the company name Re.Republican

Highlife, an ironic moniker he would use for the next eighteen months. He got his

work banging on doors. “I got a break when my friend Ken at Kilburn Lane had

too much work and let me operate as a kind of overspill. This led to working with

Einstürzende Neubauten, which introduced me to Stevo, Rob, and Jane at Some

Bizzarre,” an independent record label.

Ken asked White to join him and his friend Kath in setting up a design company

for the Virgin Group. Thus, The Clinic was born. “After eight months I decided

that I didn’t want to work in the mainstream, so I left to pursue freelance work.”

Paul White is the man behind Me Company.

Best known for digitizing the Icelandic performer Björk,

his pioneering use of 3-D graphics has fascinated

a generation of young designers and launched

a million rip-off rave flyers.

WHITE

E

1981 1996

NOW

83

PAUL

10

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Job no:81378-5 Title : RP_All Access (New PB Verdions) Client : Pro-vision

Scn :

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175 Size : 203.2(w)254(h)mm Co : M6 (mac J)

Dept : DTP D/O : 22.10.05 (Job no:000000 D/O : 00.00.04 Co: CM0)

p84

5th Black

“

O

NE LITTLE INDIAN All the sleeves

for the early releases by Some

Bizzarre and its subsidiary label

K:422 were manufactured by a company

called Mayking Records. “I used to have

a regular fight with the owner over the

quality of printing and regularly had to make

them reprint. One such fight on a Swans

cover over the color red lasted for two days.

(We won, of course.) At the time I became

quite friendly with one of the producers, Sue

Churchill. She was also part of an anarchist

punk band, Flux of Pink Indians. They were

in the process of recording their album

Uncarved Block. Having relayed the story of

the two-day argument to her boyfriend

Derek Birkett and her co-band members,

Derek called me the following week and

said something like ‘I hear you’re the best

sleeve designer in London, and a right

bolshey bastard, too. We should meet.’

“The band was looking for a production and

distribution deal and needed someone

to design the cover for their album. At this

time, we had no plan to set up a label

beyond establishing the structure to release

this LP. I liked Derrick and the rest of the

band a lot, so I started attending the record-

ing sessions and working on preliminary

ideas for the cover.”

1981 1988 1989

1982

23

1986

27

1987

28

1984

25

Einstürzende Neubauten, record sleeve

Working with singer Blixa Bargeld, White

created this sleeve when first setting up

shop in Kilburn Lane.

Fad Gadget, illustration White’s

portrait of Frank Tovey, a.k.a. Fad Gadget,

shows an early attempt at turning

musicians into robots.

Flux of Pink Indians, record sleeve Created in 1986, this sleeve was one

of White’s first collaborations with his future partners in the label One Little Indian.

Erasure, Victim of Love remix,

record sleeve White explored a more

aggressive style of ink-bottle illustration

for this 1987 sleeve.

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