Slightly embarrassed, I’m writing this bio about some work I created 20 years ago with a blurry-eyed view of the time since. Don’t get me wrong, I have done other things - I married, had children, moved from London to the Cornwall, and worked as a designer my whole adult life. But nothing, professionally speaking, has left its mark quite like this project from way back in 2004. Perhaps, like James, I am a one-hit wonder (as the joke goes).

How I came to find myself sitting next to best-selling recording artist of the decade in a tiny east London studio was, like so much of life, simply chance. My employer at the time was good friends with the soldier-turned-musician and, I think in spite of the record company’s wishes, we got the job to design the CD artwork.

Of course, at the time no one had heard of James Blunt so this was just another fun little project in between designing graphics for the studio’s fashion label, Daddy. It was the Daddy aesthetic of vintage clip art, borrowed motifs from bygone eras, and retro type - “swirly Arts-and-Crafts-meets-the-1960s-style-sirens” (Design Week, August 2003) that informed much of the creative direction for Back To Bedlam.