(Malicious Damage, 1979) [1]
Cover design by Mike Coles [2]
It's amazing how certain songs and certain images can stay with you for many years after you first encountered them.
Take, for example, the debut EP by Killing Joke with a sleeve design by Mike Coles (fig. 1). It's over forty years since its release and yet whenever there's a red sunrise - as there was this morning over Harold Hill (fig 2):
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Fig. 2 I Wonder Who Chose the Colour Scheme ...
Photo by Stephen Alexander
- it's not shepherds that I think of, but the track 'Turn to Red' that begins to play in my head (even though, ironically, the song twice informs us that the sky is turning grey).
And it's Mike Coles's Mr Punch figure [3] that I look to see dancing across the rooftops; which, I suppose evidences the power of his design, as recognised by Russ Bestley:
"One mark of a great designer in the field of music graphics is in the
way that the audio and visual become almost inseparable - you can't
listen to the music without picturing the cover artwork, and vice versa." [4].
Having said that, I agree with Bestley that Coles's images for Killing Joke set the scene for the music; that you can almost hear the band's "dark, raw power when you look at their early record covers" [6], including the Turn to Red EP, which nicely combines collage with drawing and photography set against a flat red background [7].
And, coincidently, it was Mike Coles's Turn to Red design that influenced me when asked a couple of months ago by Catherine Brown to come up with an image to promote her walking tour of Hampstead, following in the footsteps of D. H. Lawrence, as part of this year's Being Human Festival [8].
I hope - should he ever see the image (fig. 3) - that it makes Mr Coles smile ...
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Fig. 3 Turning Hampstead Red with D. H. Lawrence (2025)
Stephen Alexander (in the manner of Mike Coles)
Notes
[1] The Killing Joke EP Turn to Red was released in a 10" format by Malicious Damage on 26 October, 1979. It had two tracks - 'Nervous System' and 'Turn to Red' - on the A-side and just one track on the B-side; 'Are You Receiving?'.
It was then re-released on 14 December of that year in a 7" and 12" format by Island Records, with an additional track; a dub remix of the title track called 'Almost Red'.
The title track, featuring a closed groove so that the word red is repeated endlessly (or at least until you lift the needle of the record), can be played by clicking here. And for the remastered 2020 version, with a video by Mike Coles, click here.
[2] Mike Coles can be found on Facebook: click here. Or visit the Malicious Damage website: click here. Coles's artwork is also available to buy from the Flood Gallery: click here. Finally, readers may be interested in Coles's book; Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Graphic Voyage of Art, Design & Stubborn Independence (Malicious Damage, 2016), which traces a
pictorial history of his work under the Malicious Damage label, including the record sleeves, posters and flyers
promoting Killing Joke.
Historian of punk and post-punk graphic design, Russ Bestley, writes of this book:
"Part
autobiography, part personal reflection, part celebration, this
publication may lead to a critical reappraisal of the designer's work
alongside more widely acknowledged contemporaries, though such
considerations are far from being a driving force for the project, and
the title ironically sums up Coles' attitude towards independent and
autonomous production."
See Bestley, 'I wonder who chose the colour scheme, it's very nice …': Mike Coles,
Malicious Damage and Forty Years in the Wilderness', Punk &
Post-Punk, Volume 5, Issue 3, (Sept. 2016), pp. 311-328. The essay, which I shall refer to throughout the post, can be downloaded as a Word doc from the UAL research depository: click here.
[3] Coles already had a long interest in the traditional British puppet character of Mr Punch and the latter would become a key figure in his work: "'Mr Punch was something that fascinated me before
Malicious Damage or Killing Joke. That drawing from the first single was
done in 1977 after I'd been to the Punch & Judy festival in Covent
Garden'".
Mike Coles, quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 18 August, 2016.
[4] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.
[5] Whilst Coles is to be respected as an image-maker who developed his own unique aesthetic, for me, he strays just a little too far from what I would consider a punk visual style. And indeed, by his own admission, he "'never took much notice
of all the punk stuff'" and "'never really felt a part of the punk movement'". He was more influenced by "'Victorian freak show stuff'" than the Situationists. Quoted by Russ Bestley in the above cited essay, from email correspondence of 14 August, 2016.
[6] Russ Bestley, as cited in note 2 above.
[7] Readers might be interested to know that along with the hand-drawn image of Mr Punch and the picture of two smiling figures taken from a toothpaste ad, the cover features a (high-contrast) photo of Centre Point (which remains a London landmark to this day).
[8] The Being Human festival is an annual celebration of the humanities led by the School of Advanced Study at the University
of London, working in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
Each November they put on hundreds of free public events across the UK in the hope that they might garner support for the continued study of art, literature, history, and philosophy, etc. by demonstrating the value and relevance of such disciplines; the humanities, it is argued, enable us to understand and fully appreciate what it means to be human. For further information, click here.
Dr Brown's Hampstead walk took place on 8 November, 2025 (11:00 - 13:00): click here. It will be noted that it was decided to use an alternative (inferior and far less humorous) image to advertise the talk for reasons unknown.
