His diverse work with the Cure led to commissions from and collaborations with many other bands and artists, notably Swervedriver, Gene, Pavement, The Warm Jets, The God Machine, Jeff Buckley, Arthur Baker and Vincent Gallo. In the mid 1980s he was taken under the wing of Chris Parry and was put in charge of the creative side of Parry’s Fiction records, before going on to work with the Chicago-based acid house label Desire, where his personal favourite among his many commissions was the cover for the 1988 compilation In the Key of E, which was, it turns out, also a particular favourite of Roger Dean, the artist and designer famed for his own work with Yes and Uriah Heep.
Although he finds inspiration and a degree of influence “from the colours, from the textures and obviously the composition” from certain artists – naming Picasso, Miro and Saul Steinberg, and being particularly drawn to the “beautiful anger” of Georges Grosz – designers – Saul Bass, Storm Thorgerson – and photographers - Man Ray, Georges Hugnet, Brassaï, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, “really serious people” – he is wary of copying his idols: “This is why it works with Foruli, because what we’re doing – and this is really important – if someone asks me to design a book for Brassaï or Picasso or Chagall or Miró, I wouldn’t suddenly start getting my pastels out and start designing a cover like Miró. What I would actually be thinking is ‘What’s he about? What’s the main ingredient here? What can I exploit? What can I do something with?’ I don’t know why you’d pander to the public – you should open people’s eyes a bit.”
Opening the eyes of readers and record-buyers is what Andy has been doing for years now, finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places: “Go out and experience the world and you never know you might just see the way that two bits of metal have been joined on the quayside somewhere and the way they’re rusting and you’re looking at that thinking, ‘There’s a bit of type.’ I do really think it’s all around you.”
Andy’s openness to inspiration and the diverse opportunities that have come his way over the years have seen him work extensively as a photographer, often on his own design commissions, conducting and overseeing fashion shoots, supervising and commissioning the work of other photographers, Rankin, Perou and Matthew Donaldson among others, and branding the likes of Xfm and Planet Rock.
In the mid 1990s a commission to create six covers for Bloomsbury Publishing launched Andy’s career as a leading book designer. He has created eye-catching covers for the likes of John Berger, Tobias Wolff, Susan Irvine, Nadine Gordimer, Stieg Larsson and Margaret Atwood, working for many major publishers, including Harvill books, Maclehose Press, Penguin, Abacus, Flamingo, Bloomsbury, John Murray, Quercus and of course Foruli, a publishing house that shares his passion, his vision for how books could and should be. The results of this collaboration are already impressive, with the almost architectural designs for the bespoke edition of Peter Hook’s The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club and Glenn Hughes’s Deep Purple and Beyond, the production of which required 100 pieces of fabric each hand-cut by Andy himself.
In Foruli Andy has found the perfect environment for his creative drive: “I like the fact that we’ve got a nice positive energy about books. With today’s publishing world it’s important to be doing this because this is something you’re not going to see necessarily on a screen - this is all about touching and feeling and stroking and holding. There are so many books out there that just look great, but it’s so self-indulgent that you can’t read it. But at the end of the day if you’re putting type on paper it’s got to be read. What I want to do is to create beautiful books, beautiful objects - and as an object each one could stand on a plinth in a gallery, but better than that you can open it up and read a fantastically designed, beautiful book.”
Contact Andy
andyvelladesign@gmail.com
LINKS/PRESS
https://www.bl.uk/events/the-art-of-the-gothic-album-sleeve/
https://www.xfm.co.uk/artists/cure/pictures/cure-the-behind-the-scenes-andy-vella-obscure/
https://www.qthemusic.com/5447/guest-columngallery-obscure-the-cure-by-andy-vella/
https://www.nme.com/news/the-cure/79148/
https://dallasartdealers.org/official-cure-photographer-andy-vella-documents-33-years-with-one-of-britains-seminal-bands/
http://artdaily.com/news/72123/Official-Cure-photographer-Andy-Vella-documents-33-years-with-one-of-Britain-s-seminal-bands#.U-4-o3By_8u/"target=
https://blog.godsandalcoves.com/2014/08/01/obscure-by-andy-vella-foruli-codex/
https://thecuremexico.org/obscure-nuevo-libro-acerca-de-the-cure/
https://post-punk.com/obscure-observing-the-cure-due-out-this-autumn/
www.foruli.co.uk
www.thecure.com
Safari Books Online - Printed Media - Andy Vella
Luerzer's Archive - Featured Work
Flavorwire - Gallery: Punk and Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82
Designweek.co.uk - Glen Matlock’s Sex Pistols Filthy Lucre Photo File
https://thecuretc.wordpress.com/tag/andy-vella/
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/how-i-got-here-andy-vella/