Peter Saville


Probably most noted for his record and album cover designs for Factory Records, Peter Saville was a designer whose career spanned several decades. His early work, in the late 1970s and early 80s, included album covers for several bands on the Factory Records label, but the ones that achieved the highest level of fame were for New Order and Joy Division. The bands that really brought the record label into the spotlight, Saville designed the covers for many of the two groups albums between the years of 1979 and 2005.

He was notably influenced by the book Pioneers of Modern Typography by Herbert Spencer. The book included information that explained how modern typography had actually developed out of the ideas of 20th century painting, poetry and architecture, and not from the development of the printing industry. He was particularly influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold and his disciplined, yet subtle approach to typography. After Factory Records he worked for DinDisc, spent three years as a partner at Pentagram, was an art director at Frankfurt Balkind and eventually started his own studio. Throughout his career he has worked in the music industry, creating album covers for bands including Duran Duran, Wham! and Roxy Music.