SpeakerManchester-born Mark Farrow has been called one of the heroes of the creative industries by Creative Review magazine and deservedly so.
Assertive and passionate about design, the multi-award winner is widely respected for his uncanny appreciation of pop music aesthetics that has been at the root of his massive success as a master designer of record sleeves and CD inlays. He has numerous D&AD pencils plus an Art Directors Club of Europe gold to prove it. Farrow even received Grammy Award nominations in 1993 and 1995. More inspiring than that though, is the fact that consumers have been known to buy two Mark Farrow-designed CDs at a time, one to play and one to keep (as many fans did with the blister pack for Spiritualized). Needless to say, the record companies are appreciative of his contribution to the disk-as-collectible-object phenomenon.
Other Farrow projects include impresario and restaurateur Oliver Peyton's restaurants and bars, the cover design of the 1999 D&AD annual, a new identity and advertising for SCP furniture, an international nightclub project Home (London, Sydney and New York) and the Science Museum in London. Working with Chris Wilkinson Architects, Farrow helped devise a new gallery called the Making of the Modern World that opened in 2000.
His work has been exhibited in the Design Museum and the V&A, London.