Released next week, Punk 45: The Singles Cover Art of Punk 1976-80 is a collection of punk's seven-inch sleeves, whose distinctively DIY designs encapsulated the attitude at the heart of the musical genre. Co-edited by Jon Savage and Stuart Baker, the book includes interviews with some of the designers whose use of montage, Day-Glo colours and hand lettering created the punk aesthetic. For Savage, it was the single, not the album, that was the perfect format for the succinct speediness of the music ("A lot of punk songs were two minutes or under," he says), and here he describes some of his favourite covers of the era
Design by Steve McGarry. “The image of hustlers is from a 1964 Time magazine. The Panik were the first group to be managed by future Joy Division and New Order manager Rob Gretton.”
Montage by Linder Sterling, design by Malcolm Garrett. “I worked with Linder Sterling when we produced a magazine called The Secret Public. From the first moment I saw her work, I was a huge fan, and very pleased to work with her. I also love the colour that Malcolm Garrett put behind the central image, which is so striking. It's a feminist image on a pop record sleeve for a song about sexual excess, which manages to be at once extremely true and also very funny.”
Punk 45: The Singles Cover Art of Punk 1976-80, edited by Jon Savage and Stuart Baker, is published by Soul Jazz Books, rrp £25, distributed by Thames and Hudson
