Andrew Golub has been collecting Duran Duran memorabilia for a very long time—well over 30 years—and has probably (definitely?) amassed more, well stuff relating to their career than they’ve even got themselves. It’s hard to keep track of posters, lunch boxes and promotional key rings when you’re off gallivanting around the world shooting big budget music videos with supermodels on yachts made of pure cocaine, isn’t it? Careless memories? Thanks to Andy’s archival efforts—the results that can be see in his book, Beautiful Colors: The Posters of Duran Duran, gallery exhibits he’s mounted and his website—Duran Duran can relax, he’s got them covered.

Duran Duran emerged at the height of the New Romantic movement. Inspired by the escapist fantasies of Bowie and Roxy Music, and motivated by the do-it-yourself credo of bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash, for Duran the scene was a natural fit. As Nick Rhodes would reflect many years later in 1998, talking to Boyz magazine, “Of course [New Romanticism] was camp and over the top, but we felt very comfortable with that. It seemed very natural to put something forward that had a great visual aspect. It grew out of glam and punk, both of which were incredibly stylish movements.”

—Text above and below from Beautiful Colors: The Posters of Duran Duran by Andrew Golub. Here’s a selection of posters from the group’s early years.
 

 

On September 12, 1981, Duran Duran played a show at Amsterdam’s most famous concert venue, Paradiso. The poster below is among Paradiso’s collection of over 1000 silkscreens designed by Martin Kaye. As the concert hall’s in-house designer from 1972 to 1983, Kaye perfected a signature style of bright, attention-grabbing colors and unique lettering that helped define Paradiso’s reputable image for many years.

This poster advertises a Manchester gig on the band’s first UK tour. The artwork incorporates elements from the ‘Planet Earth’ 7” single sleeve, designed by Malcolm Garrett, who engineered Duran Duran’s graphic work and packaging up until 1985. Garrett’s close attention to detail and the importance he placed on interconnectivity between record sleeves, advertisements, and merchandise would play a huge part in realizing the band’s visual identity: “I was looking to have a kind of consistency, so that everything that might come out with the words ‘Duran Duran’ on it felt like it had come from the same family, the same visual floor.” Helping to usher in postmodernism, Garrett’s use of fonts was a conscious effort to create something new by looking back: “There was a feel in the graphics of the early ‘60s that they were really futuristic. So, if you like, I was looking backwards to move forwards. It felt right and it felt contemporary—but it also felt timeless.”

In November 1980, an English singer-songwriter and actress named Hazel O’Connor had just starred in a critically acclaimed film called Breaking Glass. She also penned the film’s soundtrack and was about to tour the UK in support of her album. For an opening act, O’Connor enlisted a then-unknown group from Birmingham called Duran Duran. Michael Berrow, one of the band’s managers, sold his flat to purchase the support slot on the tour, taking advantage of the media interest O’Connor had generated from her film. Duran Duran enjoyed valuable exposure on the Megahype tour, earning 10 GBP a week and spending nights sleeping together in the back of a van. On the road, the band got an opportunity to hone its live performance and test a brief catalog of material with large audiences. Requests for encore performances and emphatic approval from females in the audience gave Duran a first glimpse of things to come.

This poster promotes the re-release of Duran Duran’s first album and the new single, “Is There Something I Should Know?” Malcolm Garrett’s minimalist graphics are prominent in the packaging, with bright geometric shapes echoing similar themes in the new single’s video. Advertisement for the re-release also featured the first appearance of the double-D logo. Garrett elaborates on the sleeve’s visuals: “A friend of mine, she has a fairly comprehensive library of typography books, and I can remember this one particular book where I saw that double-D drawn like that. So I stole it (laughs). But the shapes, that was just me, my Modernist background coming through; that’s just my natural way of working. I always work with shapes and three-dimensions in a two-dimensional plane. So I start with something like the double-D, with the one slanted, and that suggests to me that I can then play with this idea of three-dimensionality. It’s about taking something which is flat—like the cover of a record sleeve—and introducing some kind of three-dimensionality into it.”

Malcolm Garrett’s clean lines and graphic accents can be seen in the promotion for Rio, demonstrated here on a poster that has not yet been adorned with tour information. Garrett reflects: “The licensing deal the Berrows had done with [Patrick] Nagel only covered using the full Rio illustration on the album sleeve. And so, if you look at any of the posters from that time, they could only use the illustration if they reproduced the full album sleeve. Then the Berrows managed to negotiate using a bit of the picture. I think it was either Paul or Michael’s idea that we just use the eyes.”

In a rare case of corporate endorsement, the band allowed its image to be used in Japanese liquor advertisements, such as this poster. In addition to print ads, the Suntory company also produced animated television commercials for its Whiskey Q brand, featuring the band performing to samples of “The Reflex” and “Is There Something I Should Know?”

 

 

 

 
Duran Duran’s first known interview, 1981

 
An early TV appearance on Tiswas (“Today Is Saturday Watch And Smile”) a children’s television series in the UK:

The “Friends of Mine” promo video: