Sam Vere Design

Vent 414 was originally active between 1995 and 1996, featuring Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff, Morgan Nicholls of Senseless Things and Pete Howard, formerly of The Clash. In 2024 the trio reunited at the suggestion of producer Matt Terry, initially meeting for a short studio session that quickly evolved into a new recording project built around the same jam-led writing process that shaped their original work.

The result is Second, Vent 414’s first new album in nearly three decades, released on 22 May 2026.

This project was an opportunity to experiment with process and material. I wanted to take the handmade, analogue aesthetic of Vent 414’s original 1990s releases and evolve it into something that still felt raw and immediate, but more refined.

To achieve this I worked with a combination of digital and physical techniques, repeatedly printing artwork using both a thermal printer and an inkjet printer, then scanning the results back into the computer. Through multiple cycles of printing and scanning, the image gradually degraded, building up layers of texture and distortion. I then rolled ink across some of the prints to further distress the surface, creating marks and imperfections that give the final artwork a tactile, physical quality.

These techniques were also used to develop the vinyl sleeve, which incorporates fragments of lyrics from the album set in a mix of typefaces. Much of my work looks for ways to bring analogue processes back into a contemporary design workflow, creating artwork that feels unique and materially grounded within an otherwise digital environment.