| Artist | Seaworthy |
| Title | 1897, Map In Hand |
| Label | 12k |
| Year | 2005, 2009 |
| Designer | Taylor Deupree |
| Music | Electro-acoustic, ambient |
| Desktop | Download image |
| Notes | 12k’s design ethos courtesy of label boss/musician/designer Taylor Deupree is typically understated, but beautifully presented. |
This one’s been setting the blogosphere aflame. That may be why we’ve not really had the energy to mention it here, though of course it’s deeply relevant to our cause. Sorry, did someone ask what our cause is? It’s celebrating the amazing designs of Cold Play and Pink Floyd silly!
Here’s the link to the Guardian slideshow.
This is a very unusual design by Jeff Harrison
CD packaging for the band “Splitting Adam”. The concept surrounds a fictitious character named Adam and his internal struggle with an audio triggered bipolar disorder. The cover splits Adam to reveal inside his head, a 3D animated hologram which morphs from a passive lamb into an aggressive ape. The cd and insert artwork documents Adam’s mental state along with vital stats and final prognosis.
The photo of Adam was created using combination of all 5 band members photos. Each band member needed to be shot in rotation which was used as the basis to create the smooth animated sequence. The packaging dieline was developed custom for this project and the hologram manufactured in Russia.
| Artist | Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words |
| Title | Lost in Reflections; Fall, Fall, Falling…; No Words |
| Label | Various |
| Year | 2000s |
| Designer | Thomas Ekelund |
| Music | Dark, foreboding, highly atmospheric |
| Desktop | Download image |
| Notes | Thomas Ekelund was kind enough to send us a variety of work that he’s done under the Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words name. Everything from button badges to stickers, 7″ and 12″ vinyl to cassettes and CDs are here. There’s a striking consistency across the different media that provides an entirely appropriate counterpart to Ekelund’s music which you can listen to on Virb. |
It’s been a long time coming, but you can bet we’ll be ordering one of these and featuring it here in due course. Full details on the Fact website. Okay, just gone to Ghost Box website and we’re going to have to be patient – it’s not out ’til February 2010. Sigh.
The 5 Years of Hyperdub compilation has been a favourite of ours recently. We also rate the urban guerilla sleeve design highly, finding parallels between its dressed down minimalism and the loveliness of the Designers Republic’s functional LP5 design for Autechre. Both are on our list to feature in future. Turns out the designer for the Hyperdub release is Manuel Sepulveda whose work for Warp we mentioned not so long ago. Anyway, he got in touch as he has a site up which you can visit here.
Be careful – it’s a beast, though a truly beguiling one. Here are 142 pictures to prove the point. I can’t work out how to credit the owner of this gallery, but I’ll be happy to if anyone can supply his/her details. Many thanks to Jose for the heads up. Now all I need to do is win the lottery…
| Artist | On |
| Title | Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night |
| Label | Type |
| Year | 2009 |
| Designer | Photographer: Shawn Convey, layout/design: Radu Pre |
| Music | Sylvain Chauveau and Steven Hess filtered through the mind of Helge Sten (Deathprod) |
| Desktop | Download image |
| Notes | As with the music here, so with the design: less is indeed more. Silhouettes of birds circling, type nowhere to be found on the cover, only on the labels. More birds within, wheeling over the sea. Lovely texture of thick card sleeve and vinyl inside. |
| Artist | Cabaret Voltaire |
| Title | Micro-Phonies |
| Label | Virgin/some bizarre |
| Year | 1984 |
| Designer | Original artwork: Phil Barnes, sleeve design: Neville Brody |
| Music | Cabaret Voltaire |
| Desktop | Download image |
| Notes | We hang our collective head in shame. It’s taken us over two years to feature something by Neville Brody. Then again, in our defence, it’s not the work he’s most famous for. Micro-Phonies though is an absolute beauty with its hints of wayward surgical procdures, gunsights and typesetting. That recurrent elastoplast shape really reminds us of the shape used by Matthew Barney in the Cremaster Cycle. Some ’80s graphic design looks all too steeped in that decade’s questionable values, but this transcends its time. And you have to love that font.
(This post is for Gutterbreakz) |
