Founded in 1978, Factory Records was a seminal independent record label, based in Manchester in the North of England. Formed in the wake of punk, it released records by bands such as Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Like the label 4AD Records, Factory Records used a creative team - most notably record producer Martin Hannett and graphic designer Peter Saville - which gave the label, and the artists recording for it, a particular sound and image. The label employed a unique cataloguing system that gave a number not just to its musical releases, but to artwork and other objects and projects.
Factory Records began not with a record, but with a poster: when recently-graduated graphic designer Peter Saville approached Granada TV presenter Tony Wilson to discuss sleeve designs for the nascent Factory Records in 1978, Saville presented an idea for a poster for the first four nights of the Factory club that appropriated diverse sources including Jan Tschichold’s Die Neue Typographie, the colour scheme of black and yellow of the UK’s National Car Parks and a warning sign stolen from Manchester Polytechnic’s workshop. He suggested the poster be given Factory’s first catalogue number, Fac 1. The poster was delivered late, with several spelling mistakes; Wilson paid him twenty Pounds, and a new approach to pop music design was born.
Over the next fourteen years, Factory created and sustained a visual profile that was admired and emulated worldwide, this programme, an archetype of the succesful marriage of music and design, was a product of Saville’s vision: “Factory became the platform for me to propose how I thought popular culture should be” he says.
“It was a fantastic idea to differentiate our little cottage-industry record label by having sleeves that were glossier, more expensive and more beautiful than those of the multinationals” said Wilson in 2007, the year of his untimely death, “Great idea, only we never had it. We just did what we wanted to do. And then post-rationalised it.” This appropriation of the Marxist idea of Praxis was central to Factory’s often idiosyncratic working methods.
Essentially, Factory was more than just a label - it was a cultural institution. Not only did it produce some of the most acclaimed records of the period it also gave rise to some of the most stimulating artwork and design of the late twentieth century. With built projects such as The Haçienda it pushed design further than any record label, offering the public an opportunity to engage with design as never before. For many of the post-punk generation Factory became an aesthetic education; not only were Factory followers introduced to the nuances of design language but to cultural ideas such as Situationism and praxis. Factory’s legacy still resonates today, influencing a generation with a blueprint to create, and to aspire for more out of life.
