John Foxx

John Foxx was born Dennis Leigh, but by the mid-'70s - as Ultravox began emerging from the ashes of his earlier group Tiger Lily - he had reinvented himself. The name "John Foxx," complete with its double "x," suited the sleek, modernist aesthetic he admired. It looked streamlined and futuristic on a sleeve, the graphic equivalent of a synthesizer pulse.

Foxx grew up in a working-class Catholic family in industrial northern England, surrounded by mills, factories and post-war concrete. Those landscapes would later echo through his lyrics: overpasses, motorways, anonymous architecture. Where some writers draw on romance or nostalgia, Foxx drew on underpasses and sodium streetlights.

Foxx studied graphic design at the Royal College of Art in London. His formal art training shaped his meticulous visual sensibility: album covers, typography, photography and presentation were never afterthoughts but extensions of the music itself.