They bumped into each other again in 1991 and Ashcroft told him that The Verve had been signed and that he wanted him to design their artwork. By then Cannon had founded his graphic design company, Microdot and he went on to design the covers for The Verve including Urban Hymns, often working with the photographer Michael Spencer Jones. As with so many other designers it was the punk movement that truly galvanised him into getting involved in the music scene: “It’s all down to punk rock. I didn’t get into it via other sleeve designers . . . you cannot begin to imagine how massive a cultural impact punk rock was.” He has further described it as a “nuclear style explosion” and that it “changed everything” with its most important underlying point making the arts and artistic success “achievable to the man on the street”.
Cannon’s tiny studio was in the same building as the Inspiral Carpets rock band in Manchester and at that point Noel Gallagher worked as a roadie for them. One day in 1993 he got into the lift with him wearing a pair of trainers unavailable in England at the time. According to Cannon: “The first thing Noel Gallagher ever said to me was ‘Alright, I put me hands up, where the fuck did you get them trainers?!’ We got talking and he asked what I did, I told him I was into designing record sleeves – he asked me what I had done, I told him about the early Verve stuff, he was impressed . . . (and) as he was leaving the lift he said ‘I’m in a band, and when we get signed I want you to do the artwork.” Oasis got signed to Creation Records and released Definitely Maybe the following year in 1994.
True to Gallagher’s word he got Cannon to design the unmistakable Oasis box logo and all their album design work until 1998. His work with Michael Spencer Jones in particular, was often compared to the album covers that were coming out of the Hipgnosis studio. Cannon said: “If I had to align with anybody it would be Hipgnosis” and he believed as they did, that design was a “valid, stand-alone piece of art” which just happened to be available as a record cover.
