I have a guilty secret. I am now, and have been for the last 5 years, a fully paid up member of the Pet Shop Boys fan club. I am, as my 2006 fanclub t-shirt states, a Pethead. And this book is one of my most treasured possessions.

Catalogue is exactly that: a definitive, visual retrospective cataloguing everything my favourite band have ever done. Literally EVERYTHING…

ALL the sleeve artworks and packaging for EVERY release on EVERY format
Stills from EVERY video, film and live performance
All the experimental stage sets, radical costume designs and tour programmes
Plus personal creations like the slightly eccentric Christmas cards and the brown paper fanclub magazine, inspired by the Cordings fashion catalogue.

It’s like the ultimate box-set, just without the music. Pant-wettingly exciting for the die-hard PSB obsessive.

Now for some inexplicable reason, there are people out there who don’t share my passion for the ‘Boys. And if you’re one of these delusionals, you may be wondering exactly what’s in this book for you.

Well here’s the thing. When you flick through this coffee table tome, you’ll find so much more than frivolous pop visuals. You’ll find beautiful photography, cool minimal design and obsessive attention to detail. You’ll find insights into the nuances and subtleties of typography; into the philosophy and aesthetics of live performance; and into the paradox of achieving authenticity within a musical medium all about artifice and pretence. In short, it’s a manifesto into the art of pop.

See that’s the thing about Pet Shop Boys. They are pop but they are also art. The role-call of people they have collaborated with proves it.

As well as long-term creative partners like graphic designer Mark Farrow and fashion photographer Eric Watson, you’ll find work from artists, designers, architects and photographers. People like Wolfgang Tillmans, Sam Taylor-Wood, Zaha Hadid; film directors and photographers such as Derek Jarman, Zbigniew Rybczynski, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pennie Smith and Bruce Weber; and theatre directors and designers such as David Alden, David Fielding, Es Devlin and Ian MacNeil – are just some of those included in the book.

These are all people you wouldn’t normally associate with pop music. Why is that important? Well for me it shows that great pop music is easily the equal of, and in many ways superior to, so called higher forms of art. It’s more fun too.

I could write for hours about Pet Shop Boys, but I won’t. I’ll just recommend you spend five minutes with this book.

You never know, you might be converted.

Tags: Architecture Design, Art, Artwork & Print Production, Award-Winning Marketing and Design, Bruce Weber, Derek Jarman, Digital Design Agency, Direct Marketing Agency, Eric Watson, Es Devlin, format, Graphic Design, Interactive Design Agency, Mark Farrow, Pennie Smith, Pet Shop Boys, Photography, pop music, Sam Taylor-Wood, Typography, Wolfgang Tillmans, Zaha Hadid

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