The art of Factory Records was that of a found culture. The music of the era-defining label, founded in 1978, appropriated German electronica, punk’s passion, funk’s groove and disco’s drug consumption, but its graphics found inspiration in everything from Bauhaus to the building site, Fantin-Latour to French Situationism.
A new show at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum (Use Hearing Protection: The early years of Factory Records) suggests that the label’s visual vocabulary was found on the city’s decaying, post-industrial streets, which of course much of it was, from the label’s name (although even that had a Warholian inflection) to fragments of old buildings and workshop signage. But far more interesting is that it was also found in the wider world. The real shock of Factory’s visual imagery was in how the designers brought striking, brilliant images from the modernist tradition, from Paris and Prague, Berlin and BDSM to the high street, to teenagers and passers-by.
Spearheaded by designer Peter Saville, Factory’s visual language…
