As is the case with many of the publications within The English Group’s portfolio, a broad brush approach in a project’s early days is soon narrowed down to a more singular focus that best reflects the agency’s own preferred styles.

…or, sometimes, represents instead the design styles preferred by the client in preference to those that we might recommend.

Either way, it is often the case that other designs which we are equally excited by are necessarily set aside and only rarely ever returned to within some other aspect of the project (or in some other form for someone else). …usually these designs end up consigned to a folder on the agency’s file server and are soon forgotten about as work pressures move us along.

In this case, whilst the cover designs we ended up with for Irreconcilable Truths – Sir Don McCullin’s three volume Limited Edition publication and perhaps the English Group’s career-defining project – seem entirely appropriate, well-judged and subsequent to publication, even recocognised with creative industry awards, we do wonder what impression these alternative early days designs might have enjoyed if they had been chosen instead.

The design intention was to convert some of Don McCullin’s most recognisable images to coarse halftones – indicative of the newsprint that they first appeared in – and screenprint the images atop a rough linen bookbinding fabric.

We would certainly be interested to know what you think of them.