To celebrate the 40 year anniversary of the record Unknown Pleasures, our friends and stockists Goodhood have launched a capsule collection in collaboration with Joy Division. Universal Works was lucky enough to be featured in the collection with a collaborative Windbreaker Jacket which you can find out more about here.

The Universal Works team was invited to the Goodhood Store for drinks and Q&A with Peter Saville, Stephen Morris and Jon Savage where we learnt more how the iconic design came about. 

Peter Saville was a graphic designer at the time and fresh out of grad school. He had recently started designing posters and record sleeves for the band’s label, Factory Records. Saville explained that the initial idea of the design was delivered to him by the Joy Division members. The guitarist, Bernard Sumner had pulled a black and white graph straight from the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. It was a graph which resembles digital mountain peaks but was, in fact, a “pulsating star,”  and graph by radio astronomer Harold Craft. 

Saville played around with the graph inverting the colours and Unknown Pleasures was born!

"It's kind of a template which people continue to interpret," Saville explained. "It's the endless possible interpretations of this diagram that make it so powerful, and in a way useful, for something like an album cover." 

The UW team are thrilled to be involved with this project 'As a young fan of the band and the graphics - buying the album so many years ago I’d have never imaged I’d be able to work on this project ' - Co-Founder and Designer David Keyte

Our UW x Goodhood x Joy division Windcheater is now sold out however other items are still available to purchase from the collection here.

Q&A with Peter Saville, Stephen Morris and Jon Savage