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Endpoint: Bill Smith (Artwork Designer)

created on: 16/11/2021
by: Lo55o (12474)

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Bill Smith is a British art director, designer and photographer.
He served as art director at Octopus Books in 1975 and became art director at Polydor Records and worked at Polydor from 1976-78.
Bill designed covers for Jazz legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee and was working on other Polydor artists such as Rory Gallagher and the Who.
In 1977 he designed covers for the New Wave artists, The Jam, who he designed all their album and single covers from In The City until the Bitterest Pill; and The Cure for who he designed their covers from Killing an Arab, Three Imaginary Boys and 17 Seconds.
He left Polydor in ’78 to set up BSS (Bill Smith Studio), his own design company in what was basically a corridor in a fashion house on Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End. From that little cubby\-hole he started working with many different record companies and many different bands and artists.
Across five decades Bill Smith Studio worked with more than 200 bands and artists, creating hundreds of album covers, singles bags, and CD covers.
Bill Smith Studio worked with some of the world’s best photographers, illustrators and painters on covers for, among others, Kate Bush, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, King Crimson, Eric Clapton, Toyah, Johnny Thunders, Genesis, Queen and Mike Oldfield.
Between 1976 and 2019 BSS worked with over 200 different bands and artists, creating many hundreds of covers, all with a story... That story was the basis for a book named "Cover Stories: Five decades of Album Art" (Published 29 April 2021).