Nothin' but a good time (and a great design)

Roy, left, with Stoltze design head honcho, Cliff Stoltze at a recent type conference.
Photo by Eben Sorkin (reposted with permission)
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Roy Burns is one of my best friends who lives in Boston. I have known him since my freshman year in college. When Roy used to design CD covers for in his Graphic Design courses, I doubt he ever thought that someday he would design the greatest hits album cover for America's most obnoxious hair metal band.

We had a phone conversation about it last Christmas day that went something like this:

Roy: "You won't believe whose greatest hits album cover I'm designing."

Me: "Barry Manilow"

Roy: "No, worse."

Me: "Motley Crue"

Roy: "WORSE!"

Me: "Poison?"

Roy: "YES!"


Roy and I share a lot of musical tastes in common. Two of our exceptions have been '80s hair metal and new Nashville country so I think it's kind of funny that this high profile job features one of those two genres. I say designing an album cover for Toby Keith would be worse since all those new country albums look like print ads for Ford trucks.

Roy & co. had originally designed the album with the words "Talk Dirty to Me" at the bottom of the cover, written in lipstick. You can see that in the above picture. The Poison powers that be changed that in the end to call the album, "20 Years of Rock". Who are they trying to kid? Wouldn't be more accurate to say 10 years of rock and 10 years of drinking a fifth of whiskey a night, shooting things into our veins and diving into plates of nose candy? I guess that wouldn't fit on the cover.

Regardless of his personal opinion of the band, Roy made the very most of the album cover which is the best design work Poison has ever had. Way to go hometown boy!