Malcolm Garrett is a British graphic designer who made his name in the late 1970s and early '80s for creating album covers for bands like Buzzcocks, Magazine, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, and Peter Gabriel.
He was one of the first to embrace the challenges of design and digital technology, and his London studio was amongst the first of its peers to go completely digital in 1990.
Garrett was born in Northwich and attended St Ambrose College. He studied typography at the University of Reading from 1974 and graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1975 until 1978 – one of his fellow students was Peter Saville.
Today, Malcolm is the creative director of Images&Co in London. He is an ambassador for Manchester School of Art and co-founder of the annual Design Manchester festival.
In this first-ever episode of The Creative Boom Podcast, we chatted to Malcolm about those early days of punk, working for big bands like Buzzcocks and creating epic album covers. And we found out more about how he feels about technology – how it's shaped his own life and career. If you stay tuned, you'll find out why a tin of black paint comes in handy if you're a student in the 1970s.
