Record Sleeve Design: Music for Airports 1
This project asked us to redesign the sleeve of a famous record. That challenged us to explore different ways of visual communication, and we had to find a way in which we can translate the emotions and feelings created by music into a visual piece of art. Also, we were asked to research previous designs and historically associated visual languages in order to complete the task.
I designed a record sleeve for Brian Eno’s masterpiece „Music for Airports“, which is known to be the first record of the genre Ambient music. As I didn’t know a lot about Brian Eno or the record itself, I started my project with a research about his life and his music. That helped me to understand Brian Eno’s way of thinking and his inspirations which I wanted to include in my project better. Also, I looked at the previous designs he did and at artists he worked together with.
Research Music for Airports 1
Original Design and Inspirations
Brian Eno’s record sleeves
Peter Schmidt’s artworks
I developed the first ideas for my own design by using Oblique strategy card. They asked me to complete random tasks in order to find new creative approaches. The first card asked me to „Go slowly all the way
The next Oblique card asked me to „Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities“. I started experimenting with watercolors and ended up painting abstract color combinations. I reused some of them further on in the project. While painting Music for Airports was my main source of Inspiration.
The last card challenged me to look at the mistakes I made (“Emphasize the flaws.”) and I had to figure out what I could improve. I reviewed my previous ideas and the research I did and started designing my own record sleeve. As I wanted to include movement, but also a human body in my design, I started messing playing around with floating bodies. This approach was inspired by Brian Eno’s idea of creating music that makes you feel like you are suspended in the universe.
In a next step, I tried to find a balanced composition between text and image. I messed around with different layouts that include an excerpt of the floating body, the name and of the artist, and the name of the record itself. At that point, I also decided to include the typography of the original Music for
Choosing the colors was for me the biggest challenge of the project, as they changed the appearance of the design completely. During this stage of the project, I got a lot of inspiration from the artworks of Brian Eno’s close friend and artist Peter Schmidt. When painting I listened to music for Airports and I tried to combine different color combinations I found in books with my own ideas. I started paintings with acrylics and watercolors but decided then to switch to Lino-cut, as it allowed me to create a more even and less busy design.
I created two record sleeves, one with a beige background and a dark green body and one with a dark blue body on a light blue/grey background. I decided to choose the blue design as my final piece because I felt that it works better with the music. During the whole process I build up a visual research board, which strongly represents the inspirations that helped me to get to the final piece.
This project challenged me in many different ways and I learned a lot about the importance of a balanced composition between images and text. Also, I had the possibility to experiment with different color combinations and Linocut. This new knowledge will definitely help me in future projects.
I found that the translation of sounds into visual art was very exciting and inspiring at the same time and I also had the possibility to learn a lot about Brian Eno, an outstanding artist with a very unique idea about music.
