IMAGES
This web site contains only a few of Trevor Key's images as it mostly focuses on his life and career but many of his images are in the public collections which are listed below. As a creative artist early in his career Trevor found the presence of 'art directors' on many commercial photography projects to be creatively inhibiting as well as downright annoying. He came to realize that producing album covers for the new music companies and musicians that were emerging in the 1960s and 1970s was often free of this interference and provided the creative freedom he craved and as a result many of his best known works are album covers. But it is important to be aware that album covers form only a part of Trevor’s creative output.
THE OFFICIAL TREVOR KEY ARCHIVE PROJECT
The large somewhat disorganised archive of props and images that Trevor left behind after his unexpected death in 1995 is now being properly categorised and digitised in a major project involving the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
But back in 2017 Patrick Burgoyne was given the opportunity to sift through the archive in its original form and he wrote a compelling review of its contents and of Trevor’s undisputed stature as ‘Music Design’s Unsung Hero’. Read the article here.
Public Collections
Several public collections that are mainly focused on Trevor's album cover images are available on the Internet and links to some of the major ones are provided below.
Rate Your Music
The list Trevor Key Cover Art and Photography created by dial35 on the Rate Your Music web site contains images of many of Trevor's best known album covers.
Wikipedia
Trevor's Wikipedia entry lists many of his covers and provides links to some of his images. It also includes some information about his other creative output.
Discogs
The Trevor Key Discography on the Discogs web site is another source of Trevor's album cover images as well as details of the recordings themselves.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Searching the V&A's collections for Trevor Key brings up some limited information about his work, in the future it is hoped this will become more complete.
PUBLICATIONS
'Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album' by Matthew Robertson contains Trevor's images on pages 28, 70, 89, 110, 111, 122, 123, 131, 148 and 151, though these are not identified in the index.
Whereas in 'Designed by Peter Saville' edited by Emily King all of Trevor's images that appear are identified in the index.
The Peter Saville Information Site
This Japanese web site includes the album covers Trevor produced in collaboration with Peter Saville during the 1980s and early 1990s, many of them for Factory Records. Enter the search string site:petersaville.info trevor key into DuckDuckGo, Bing or Google to get links to the relevant pages and then search for 'Trevor' on each page to identify the covers on which Trevor is credited.