Studio Fury and Ian Wright’s Rolling Stones book

The cover image is an image of the Stones’ logo made from badges featuring unseen photographs of the band.

Stephen Kennedy, creative director of Studio Fury, says he was engaged by the band’s management and given access to newspaper The Mirror’s picture archive before processing unseen images and handing them over to Wright.

Kennedy says, ‘There’s not been a consistent line-up, so we needed to develop an idea that featured all the current members, and referenced those that were alive and dead – past and present. The only consistent thing for the last 50 years has been the logo.’

Kennedy, who conceived the idea with Studio Fury art director Jimmy Tilley, first worked with Wright ten years ago on other collaborative projects, including the cover art for Ian Brown’s The Greatest.

Wright was given images of all four of the current band members which were then cast as badges before being brought together to form The Stones tongue.

The pixelated effect means the image becomes very scaleable, according to Kennedy, who says, ‘online it will work well as a thumbnail but in store you can see that it’s not just a graphic logo.’

Wright put the image together using 2500 badges. It took him two days in March, with help from his daughters.

The Rolling Stones: 50 is published on 12 July by Thames & Hudson, priced £29.95