Katie Lennon’s winning design displayed alongside work by famous designers

Photo: The University of Central Lancashire

Katie Lennon and her artwork

Katie Lennon has been chosen as one of the winners of the Secret 7” design competition.

Katie, 22, from Rochdale, saw her artwork go on display alongside works by world-famous designers including Sir Paul Smith, Sir Anish Kapoor, Jenny Holzer and George Hardie.

The annual exhibition challenges creatives from around the world to choose from a list of seven tracks and design a one-of-a-kind vinyl cover for that record.

Judges selected 100 designs for each track to go on display at Sonos Studio in London’s Shoreditch where they could be bought for £50 apiece, with all proceeds going to Amnesty International.

The Secret 7” exhibition doesn’t reveal the artists until after the sale and Katie saw her design – a grapefruit-inspired cover for John Lennon’s Imagine – get snapped up on the day.

Music and art fans queued overnight to get their hands on designs with 200 people having arrived at the venue before the doors had even opened. Katie’s was one of more than 400 pieces to sell on the day.

Katie, a former Hopwood Hall College student who currently studies Illustration at the University of Central Lancashire, said: “It was crazy to be chosen for something as big as this and I was thrilled that mine was one of the designs that were sold.

"I created a grapefruit design because when I researched the song I found out that Imagine was actually inspired by a poem from Yoko Ono’s book, Grapefruit. I don’t think a lot of people know that, and I wanted to do something unexpected.”

For the project, Katie designed and produced merchandise, which features the hairstyles of music icons such as The Beatles and David Bowie, for independent radio station Soho Radio.

She explained: “I’m really interested in subcultures and how they can be identified by a hairstyle. Subcultures are often inspired by music too, so I took the hairstyles of influential musicians and created my designs around that.

“I’d really like to approach Soho Radio with the designs to see if they’d like to use them and I’m planning on sending them some of the products. My long-term goal is to work in fashion though, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”