In the early 1990s I had designed two album covers for a commercially successful punk metal band called Wolfsbane, the first of which reached no.2 in the Rock Charts and featured in large displays for Oxford Street stores such as HMV and Tower Records. It was an exciting time during which theband were dual-signed to Phonogram and Def Jam America.  The imagery, logos and motifs that I created for those first albums became part of the accepted iconography of this now cult group. In 2022 I was asked once more by the group, now with a very long established fanbase, young and old, to produce a visual concept for their new album Genius, both producing the iconographic logo, the imagery and holistic design concept. This was a return to design freedom but now with an immediate sense of narratives and images that were closely guarded and loved by the fanbase of three decades. It was therefore a tricky path of design to produce and required another level of understanding; the band has a particular energy and style and it’s members are themselves iconographic for the fans, each with a very different performative character.

In the design process, I investigated how that imagery connected and reimagined the celebrated narratives and iconographic style of the band's long history. Every track took on its own iconographic ident and these formed an additional sheet of tattoos accompanying the finished vinyl version of the album (tattoos for the most loyal of fans were clearly a phenomenon). Original motifs such as 'Wolfie' and the character 'Kathy Wilson' were reimagined and updated. An overarching post-apocalyptic 'zombie' narrative headlined the album, which included the song 'Zombies' and I worked to produced a comic book style reminiscent of the Iron Maiden support tour t'shirt that I had produced back in the early 90's. For this then I produced Kathy Wilson as a now young adult character in full-colour cover art, reminiscent of 90s comics, and each of the band members in a centrefold portrait. Throughout the process I engaged with both the band, memorabilia, narrative history, fan socials and gigs at which I also became aware of the iconographic motif tattoos worn on the arms and legs of HMS, the fanbase (Howling Mad Shitheads). I was particularly interested in how some of the small motifs, originally drawn as quite fast embellishments, had become core authentic identifiers for fans. In the latter half of the process, and using this acquired knowledge, I produced t-shirt designs and the group applied the illustration to a broad range of limited merchandise.