Q+A with graphic designer Stuart Jones

Do you know who is behind the design and art direction of your favourite albums – not to mention your beloved 7 and 10 inch vinyl and cassettes??? I wish I could add 8-track here, but I'm not sure if the person I'm talking to here has designed one... yet.

Meet Stuart Jones, "freelance graphic designer" (as he refers to himself) and one of the people behind many of the gems that have been produced and released by Sonic Cathedral. 

Some of you probably already know of Stuart's work, and that of his brother. I did not. What changed that was an Instagram post that Stuart made on 31 October 2023, re-posted by Emma Anderson. As you will see, it is a photograph of the pristine flexi disc remix version of Emma's song "Xanthe" – limited to the Dinked Edition of her album Pearlies. What a beautiful thing!

And from there, well... I could see that Stuart makes a lot of beautiful things that I listen to. So, I just decided to get in touch with Stuart and learn a bit about what he does as far as music-related graphic design. And weirdly, around this same time I had finally got to see Anton Corbijn's Squaring the Circle, a film about the 70s album art that was designed by Hipgnosis. Luckily Stuart gave my questions some consideration and well, here are his answers...

To put it simply, you’re a graphic designer… but can you briefly describe your job/career, your specialties and the current focus of your work?

I’m a freelance graphic designer. Which means I’m either panicking about not having enough work, or anxious about having too much. 

When I graduated (with a degree in Visual Communication Design from Middlesex University) way back in 1995, I got a summer job working for a small studio in Clerkenwell.

I ended up staying there for about four years during which time the studio grew from a one-man band to a team of four. 

It was a great place to work, and I learned more there than at university. We worked on various types of jobs for a range of clients – CD covers, book design, logos, posters and publications for the arts and, towards the end of my time there, we started designing a magazine for a publishing company who shared the building with us. That sparked a love of editorial design. My brother – mistermarcjones – was already working in magazines at this point, and I was interested in the work that he was doing. So towards the end of 1999, a deputy art editor position came up at J17 – the teen mag – and I applied for that, and got the job.

I then stayed working in magazines for almost twenty years, mainly on mainstream fashion/shopping/gossip titles. It was a lot of fun, and I worked with some great people, but the hours were long and it was quite relentless. And of course, then the internet came along, and magazine readerships dwindled, and the teams got smaller. Eventually, I was made redundant in 2018. 

I specialise in print design – but only because I’ve never learned how to design websites or apps, which is a bit of a shame really.

Album art (and related items) - you’ve designed a lot of it for certain artists and a particular record label… how do you balance the artist and each unique work with the house style of a record label?

Although it’s long been a dream of mine, it’s only really the last five years that I’ve started designing album art. 

The first thing I did was y by Sobrenadar for Sonic Cathedral, back in 2018. Then for a while, I just did smaller bits of design, social media stuff and packshot mock-ups for Sonic Cathedral. At that time, quite a lot of the Sonic Cathedral work was done by my brother mistermarcjones, and I’d help out on some projects. For example, I did the centre labels on Andy Bell’s second album Flicker… I contributed ideas for other parts of the design, but that’s the bit that ended up getting used.

Gradually, as Marc’s day-job workload has increased, I’ve done more and more for Sonic Cathedral, meaning that this year, I’ve actually ended up doing quite a lot for Nat and his bands.

Nat has quite strong ideas about what he does and doesn’t like, and generally he, Marc and I share the same sort of aesthetic. But I wouldn’t necessarily say the label has a house style.

Working with bands and artists on Sonic Cathedral is always varied. Each act is starting from a different place, visually. So some bands will have pretty much everything ready to go – and I just need to put their designs onto the correct templates, ready for print. Some will have images or front cover artwork, but might need a logo. And some will have nothing at all. This is all good, as it means that I’m not starting every job from the same point, which I think helps with avoiding getting stuck into too much of a house style. 

Away from Sonic Cathedral, I’ve also been doing quite a few reissue projects for major labels over the last couple of years. A lot of the time there, you’re following a style that’s been established by another designer ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. But some of the jobs have been a lot more creative.

Can you identity a few of your favourite works from your own portfolio?

I’ve been really happy with all the Sonic Cathedral work I’ve been involved in. 

Just over a year ago (10th November 2022), I first met Ben and Dottie from deary – over email – and it’s been great to work with them. Right from the start, they had strong ideas – including an image for their EP, shot by Juno Jou during their first photo shoot. They knew what they wanted the cover to be, even down to wanting transparent stickers with the band name on the front. The rounded corner inner sleeves were an early design decision too, as we all loved the Dinked Edition of White Flowers’ Day By Day. Marc and I worked on developing a logo for deary, and put together a reference PDF/mood-board for other aspects of the artwork. There were a few false starts, but under Ben and Dottie’s direction, we finished up with something we’re all really happy with. It’s amazing to see the finished EP out in the world. I love the record too. “Fairground” was my Spotify most-played song of the year!

Marc and I also got to work on Emma Anderson’s debut album Pearlies. A dream project. We’d both loved the designs that v23 had done for Lush, and so we were conscious about not making the cover too much a pastiche of that style. Yet at the same time, I wanted something that could kind of sit with Emma’s other work, and not look completely at odds with it. 

I’m delighted with how Pearlies turned out, and with the really positive response the album has received. I’ve been a fan of Emma’s music over the years anyway. The first piece of v23/4AD art I owned was the CD of Scar by Lush, which I can remember buying from Musiquariam in Swansea Market in 1989. And I think Lush could have been the first band Marc and I ever saw live, when they opened for The Cure at the Crystal Palace Bowl on 11th August 1990.

Aside from Sonic Cathedral, Marc and I contributed to the Kirsty MacColl box set See That Girl. We worked with Tony at Estuary English on that. Tony was one of my first bosses at a company called M2 in Clerkenwell, when I’d just graduated, and I’ve been helping him out on various music-related projects over the last almost four years. Marc did the cover image for the box, based on a photograph of Kirsty taken by Paul Cox on the 15th November 1983. And I designed an accompanying 7-inch single, which is the first-ever physical release of Kirsty’s long-lost second single from 1979, “You Caught Me Out”/“Boys”. I had a lot of fun doing that one – channelling late 70s/early 80s Stiff Records design. Michael Mulligan, who compiled the boxset, found a fantastic Adrian Boot photograph of Kirsty with Simon Crowe and Pete Briquette of the Boomtown Rats (who’d co-written the single), which was perfect for the cover.

Finally, I have to mention the career retrospective Blondie box set Against The Odds: 1974–1982, which Tony at Estuary English got me involved with. That’s what really kickstarted this run of working on record sleeves for me. It was a real labour of love that we worked on for over a year – through many lockdowns. It’s a high-spec quality product; the main super deluxe set weighs about 18lb! We worked closely with Ken from Numero, who masterminded the project, and Thomas Manzi, the band’s manager. We’d have Friday afternoon Zoom meetings, nearly every week for about a year. I hope we did justice to the band’s amazing legacy, and also to the efforts of Ken and Thomas and the team, who’d spent years on the project before we’d even got involved.

How has your own style changed over time?

It’s hard to say really. I don’t think I’ve got much of an individual style. I spent almost 20 years working as part of a design team on mainstream magazines, so it’s mainly been about blending in. 

I’ve developed a way of working over the years that has, out of necessity, been about working quickly – either because of lack of time, or lack of budget. 

I do wish my work was a bit more hands-on and practical and experimental though, rather than being all computer based. It would be fun to do some actual print making or drawing.

How would you characterise album art in 2023 - what were the trends, innovations, novelties and stand-out examples?

I always think that album covers are predominantly picture-led now. Quite often, it’s a very styled image of the artist, and the type is quite secondary. We’ve done a bit of that with Sonic Cathedral – for example, the Sobrenadar album. And actually, the Emma Anderson album and the deary EP don’t have any type on the front if you remove the obi or sticker… Although I’m sure there are numerous examples where this is completely untrue. 

One thing that I think has been a requirement since we’ve all started using iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and the rest, is that the cover needs to work at a very small size. You’re almost thinking about the cover more as an app icon… And – as there’s usually the artist and album name in the app anyway – it kind of reduces the role of the type on the cover. You can do away with it all together, or make the type quite experimental and expressive, pushing the legibility – like on Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, for example. 

Actually, that cover with its lovely die-cut outer sleeve, emphasises the importance of making the vinyl release an interesting physical object in its own right. So even if the way you listen to music is predominantly through streaming, you might still want to buy the record too.

Designing cassettes is a thing again - what’s that like? Fun? Challenging? What are the best or worst aspects from your perspective?

Well, I’m from the generation that put together carefully sequenced tapes and compilations for each other. Designing a homemade cover was a part of all that. I’ve still got a box of cassettes at home full of compilations I made, or that my brother made for me in the early 90s. There’s a really good one Marc sent me that has the JAMC version of Sugarcubes’ “Birthday” on it, which I can remember listening to on my not-Walkman, while waiting to change trains at Bristol Parkway station… 

This means that to get to design proper commercial cassettes actually feels quite natural. 

Also, when I’ve designed releases for Sonic Cathedral, the cassette – because of the short manufacturing times – is often done quite late in the process. So it’s quite an enjoyable process to chop up the LP and CD layout and re-work them for a cassette inlay, which of course is a completely different shape. 

And there are so many choices for the colours of the cassette shell and the outer box. You can really have a bit of fun with it. Nat suggested a lovely glittery cassette for Emma Anderson’s Pearlies. I’ve bought quite a few cassettes from the likes of Boomkat and Finders Keepers, purely because of the packaging.

What do you expect the style(s) of 2024 album art to be?

Well, it’s not getting any cheaper to manufacture vinyl! I think the major labels will continue to invest in the big releases, and we’ll continue to see multiple vinyl formats and so on. 

Even for a smaller label like Sonic Cathedral, there’s a requirement to produce special editions for various retailers – for example, Dinked Editions, and Rough Trade limited versions. It’s exciting to think up some added extras for those - such as the flexi disc for Pearlies, or the zine for the Rough Trade edition of the deary EP.

But maybe in 2024, we’ll have to start reining it in a little bit. 

It’s hard to predict what will happen to design styles. Album art doesn’t exist in a bubble though. It reflects what’s happening in the larger design world, and also brings in the worlds of fashion and photography and fine art.

I’m sure we’ll see a bit more AI-generated imagery and type. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more already, to be honest. I think album lead times have maybe made people cautious about doing too much of that, as the technology develops so fast that a cover could look dated by the time it hits the shelves.

It can be used in really interesting ways though. The imagery on Whitelands’ single sleeves is computer generated, although I’m not sure what the exact process is or what software they use. But I love them. When you zoom in on the high res versions, they manage to look digital and pixellated yet painterly all at the same time.

We’ve even dipped our toes into the world of limited digital pressings, which are kind of amped-up downloads of an album. I can kind of see the advantages of them, as you can do an alternative cover, and bundle in lots of extras such as digital booklets, videos and artist voice notes. But I think we’re a way off from them being widely accepted. There’s still an element of mistrust around them – a hangover from NFTs, I think.

Who is/are designer(s) or examples of work that you really admire?

My interests in design and music have always gone hand in hand, right from the days of buying Please, Disco and Actually by Pet Shop Boys and clocking Mark Farrow’s name. Even now, his work from back then seems so bold. When you think of the 7-inch sleeve for “Always On My Mind”, with its tiny type and barcode-sized picture on the front cover, it’s almost shocking. And this was a Christmas number one single, by a pop band in the midst of their “imperial phase”. Such confidence!

Around the same time, I got really into Peter Gabriel’s So, and the amazing-looking singles from that album. Reading the design and photography credits for Peter Saville and Trevor Key led me to Technique by New Order, and from there the wonderful world of Factory Records.

The Scar EP by Lush introduced me to the v23 and 4AD, and a whole wealth of amazing design by Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg. And then I got into people like Neville Brody, the Designers Republic, David Carson, Chris Ashworth…

And more recently – although not that recent – the fantastic visual world that Julian House has conjured up for Ghost Box. Adjacent to that, the incredible Scarfolk by Richard Littler. I love Paul Flack’s work for Trunk Records too.

Recently, Marc, Nat and I went to see an exhibition of typography by Phil Baines at The Lethaby Gallery. Phil Baines’ work had been really influential for a lot of us at university, and it was fantastic to get reacquainted with it. There’s a great book from 1991 called “Typography Now: The Next Wave” that a lot of us at university pored over. You can pick up secondhand copies quite cheaply online. It sort of represents that turning point, when designers were starting to use computers more and more. I immediately bought a copy on my phone while walking around the exhibition.

What are you listening to lately?

Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Carey Blyton’s 1975 score for Doctor Who – Revenge Of The Cybermen which has just been released on Silva Screen. I like 60s/70s/80s electronic music, whether that’s something by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or Patrick Cowley.

Other than that, I listen to a lot of Spotify playlists of library music, easy listening and disco. And those incredible compilations that Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have been putting out on Ace Records. 

As an aside, it was thrilling to see the words “Saint Etienne” on one of my designs, when they and Augustin Bousfield reworked the deary track “Fairground” for a 10-inch single earlier this year. I’ve loved their records almost from the start. I’ve still got the CD single of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, with its fantastic Andrew Weatherall remix and that brilliant b-side “Filthy”, which I bought from HMV in Exeter, when I briefly went to Polytechnic South West.

And of course, I listen to a lot of Sonic Cathedral acts. I’m biased, but I think the last two or three years have been a purple patch for the label. Sonic Cathedral is twenty years old next year. I’m already working on a couple of things for the first few months of 2024, and I’m also excited to get to work on some stuff to celebrate the twentieth anniversary. 

Thank you for taking the time, Stuart. 2023 was a great sounding, and looking, year for new music. All indications seem to be that you'll be doing your part to ensure that 2024 looks just as good, if not better. Thanks to Emma for that re-post and of course a nod to Nat at Sonic Cathedral. All eyes on the 20th anniversary of Sonic Cathedral. 👀