Mark Farrow, The Other Rock Star Designer
By: Fredrick Royster
Tags: Album Cover Art, Visual Communication, Graphic Design, David Carson

I once saw one of those silly Facebook questions/memes that you are supposed to tag a friend and have them answer the question “Have you ever bought a record (God, I’m dating myself) just because you thought the album cover was cool?”

Honestly, no, but if it was designed by graphic designer Mark Farrow, I probably would.

Most people don’t know designers by name. It’s pretty much anonymous art, for the people and by the people. Whoever designed the packaging for Chex cereal you ate this morning didn’t sign the box (thankfully). But like Peter Saville who I reviewed last week, Farrow is also a rock star graphic designer.

The very same high school friends who introduced me to New Order, also introduced me to The Pet Shop Boys.

My first encounter with them was the stunning “Lego/Manhole cover” for their album “Very”. I had never seen such sophisticated CD packaging before (or since really) with its raised round Lego like surface. I also wanted the rare (in the US) companion album “Relentless” (you get the clever English pun, Very Relentless), whose soft plastic packaging was just as intriguing.

As you can see, my love of electronic music and graphic design are tangled and intertwined, especially in my design school years in the late 90s at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was obsessed with rave flyer art, The Designer’s Republic (responsible for Intelligent Dance Music label Warp Records art work) and The Me Company (responsible for Bjork’s album and single cover art work for her first three records, Debut, Post, and Homogenic and led me to copying them and using the Rotis Sans typeface A LOT in college), and the anti design of David Carson, who for better or worse gave us the distressed/dirty/ransom letter type movement (which I also copied) and later did the album art for Nine Inch Nails third album, “The Fragile”

Clearly bands like New Order, and The Pet Shop Boys understood the power of beautiful album art work and packaging.

Farrow said Factory Records would let him do just about anything he wanted to design wise.

Farrow’s story somewhat mirrors my own, since it was his obsession with music that lead him to a design career.

He worked in a small record shop on Saturday afternoons, and began meeting local bands in Manchester, England, home to New Order’s record label Factory Records and the club they started, The Hacienda.

A local band asked him to design a cover, and his career took off and began doing freelance work for Factory alongside with Peter Saville (who I discussed in a previous article), New Order and Joy Division’s album cover artist.

The stunning minimalism of just type and a photo of the duo on a white background like on the albums “Please”, “Actually” and “Behaviour” always intrigued me, and something I could never pull off in my own work.

Farrow and The Boys even committed the music marketing sin of leaving their picture off the album art for “Bilingual”, the cover just a vibrant yellow and sans serif bold type.

I have a feeling someone complained, because later editions of “Bilingual” have the Boys picture on it.

Farrow had more than just PSB as clients, but did work for Kylie Minogue, Spiritualized, The Manic Street Preachers, and another favorite of mine, Orbital.