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Spandau Ballet – True album art

Contributed by Javi Gonzalez on Jun 22nd, 2024. Artwork published in
March 1983
.
Spandau Ballet – True album art 1
Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Wikipedia:

True is the third studio album by English pop band Spandau Ballet, released on 4 March 1983 by Chrysalis Records. […]

[Songwriter/guitarist Gary Kemp] was competing for [Altered Images lead singer Clare Grogan’s] attention with Altered Images cover artist David Band and asked him to work with Spandau Ballet on the design for the new album. Because they were both seeing their careers take off during their attempts to court Grogan, they went camping together a few times in the English Lake District as a way of escaping their success. Kemp recalled, “We first started to devise a cover together for the True album when we were up in the mountains, in one of the pubs one evening. He was drawing in his sketchbook and a dove appeared, this little dove.” Band later added alongside it the outline of a man’s head with a brimmed hat, which the band loved; a variation was used for the sleeve of the “True” single. His work was described as “a marker for the look of the time, a jazz-influenced style that could also be seen in an exaggerated fashion in the New Romantic look.” Kemp credits him with having “the skill of coming up with simple, figurative graphics that would set a visual tone for the decade.”

The typography in Optima is by Stephen Horsfall, who here is credited as “Stephen Horzfall”.

[More info at Discogs]

The credits on the bottom of the back cover are set in . The Chrysalis logo uses .
Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

The credits on the bottom of the back cover are set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic. The Chrysalis logo uses Neptun.

Spandau Ballet – True album art 3
Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.
Spandau Ballet – True album art 4
Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

Typefaces

  • Optima
  • ITC Avant Garde Gothic
  • Neptun

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