Randall and Hopkirk, Take One


In my last post, I reproduced an article from 2016 looking at the two different sets of opening titles on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Having two or more iterations of a piece of work is somewhat more commonplace in the world of graphic design and, appropriately enough, there was a different set of designs proposed for the R&H Blu-rays which never saw the light of day. As you will see, they came very close to being produced, as I still have fully typeset versions in my archive. This work was all done seven years ago, and I can no longer recollect the reason why the designs were altered. Usually, any amendment to my original designs would be at the behest of Network CEO Tim Beddows, who signed off on everything – usually with no quibbles, but occasionally he'd balk at something. I know he hated the colour pink, so it may have been that the proposed sleeve for Volume Three didn't meet with his approval. On the other hand, I may have taken the decision myself: the idea was to have a different coloured background on each sleeve, which would have given a rainbow effect when the spines were laid side by side in the final box set. And as a designer, there's nothing I hate more than rainbow colours (although I made one recent exception with the colourised Gerry Anderson set). To me, a good design needs a good colour scheme, and when you've got all seven colours of the spectrum present, the result is visual overload. I only ever did the first three sleeves in this iteration, before settling on the somewhat austere black and white and orange version that made the final cut.

Here, then, for the first time in public, are those unused Randall and Hopkirk sleeves. If you're wondering why the cover images are all monochromatic, it's simple: there was a better choice available from ITV's black and white scans.


Print-ready, typeset version of Volume 2

Photoshop background for volume 3






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Just for the Record...

Image
If anyone out there knows me at all, it’s most likely as a designer. But I am also a writer – in fact, my first job was as a copywriter in an advertising agency, forty years ago… As well as designing sleeves for Network’s DVD and Blu-ray releases, I also wrote articles, some of which appeared online, whilst others graced the inner sleeves of various titles. With the Network website now defunct, those articles are no longer accessible, so I’m going to repost as many of them as I can find on this blog, along with a few which never saw the light of day. To start the ball rolling, and following on from my previous blog about designing the sleeves for this series, here is a piece I wrote back in 2016 to accompany Network’s release of  Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)  on Blu-ray. I’d often speculated about the reasons for there being two different sets of titles for the series, and with the help of Tim Beddows, who had access to original prints and paperwork, I was finally able to co...
Read more

'Do It Like the Title Sequence'

Image
I was always very aware of the opening credits of television programmes. Before I was old enough to follow the plots and appreciate the programmes themselves, I was still able to enjoy the title sequences, some of which were cooler and more exciting than the programmes they preceded. They did more than entertain: they gave me an appreciation of graphic design long before I knew that such a phenomenon existed, and they introduced me to some of the 1960s’ most striking and iconic typefonts. I was always a sucker for packaging. Anything that came in a cool box, with a good logo was always intriguing, even if the products weren’t aimed at children. I loved all examples of what we now call petrolania – the signage one saw at petrol stations – and would also marvel at the colourful boxes one saw on trips to the supermarket. Fonts were what really drew me in, and I had a particular affinity for all the modern sans serif variants, some of which were appearing in public for the first time. In t...
Read more