Introduction

For the first project of ‘Picture Symbol Icon’ our task was to redesign a vinyl sleeve for a genre defining single. It had to reflect the style of music while also referencing designers and the visual language associated with the genre of the song.

The final cover had to be made using manual techniques and made to full 12″ x 12″ scale.

Initial Research

I decided to redesign the cover for the song ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ by Bauhaus.

This song kick started the Gothic Rock genre of music, taking inspiration from Siouxie and the Banshees, Joy Division and others to create a uniquely dark and gloomy track. It featured various distorted guitar sounds and delays alongside a deep descending bass line to create an ominous atmosphere before Peter Murphy’s Bowie-esque vocals creep in with “White on white translucent black capes”.

I felt I needed to try and capture this strange sound through visuals, either directly referencing sound production and sound waves, or a more subtle textural element. I investigated the visual representations of oscillating sound waves with different effects applied to them, partly inspired by Peter Saville’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ cover which featured a scientific pulsar graphic.

I also wanted to include reference to Dracula and 1920s silent horror films due to the title and lyrics of the song as well as the original cover, which featured a still from the film ‘The Sorrows of Satan’.

The existing Bauhaus album artwork alongside the other Gothic Rock albums of the time all share similar features. Mainly black and white, featuring images of skeletons, dark forests and horrific creatures from folklore. From this a common style emerged, popularised by Peter Saville, of a Gothic image framed in the centre of the cover with the band’s name below. This simple yet effective layout helped define the visual style of the Gothic Rock genre and so I felt I needed to pay homage to his work in my final design.

 

Planning + Design

To begin designing, I decided on taking a still from one of the 1920s silent films to use as a base for the cover. I looked through many classics, including Bela Lugosi’s ‘Dracula’ before settling on ‘Nosferatu’, a German adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic. The weirdly terrifying image of Count Orlok instantly sets up the idea of the song being dark and possibly even scary while fitting into the visual style of the other Gothic album covers.

I also found a graphic of a sound wave with a distorted ‘fuzz’ effect applied, which appeared as a squared off, uneven oscillating line. I decided to use this as it represented some of the guitar sounds in the song, as some of the instrumentals had the same effect applied to them.

While planning, I decided to edit the image of Nosferatu in the doorway to roughen its edges and distort it. In order to do this I experimented with a basic image editing package for a while before switching to manual methods. I instead printed a copy  and then used acrylic paint in a very textural way to remove the hard lines within the image. This produced a much more natural texture which I much preferred to any of the digital edits.

To create the sound wave, I first found some red wrapping paper and stuck pieces of tape to its surface in a random pattern. By removing it carefully, it took some of the red with it, revealing the white backing paper underneath. From here, I cut the shape of the wave out of the painted Nosferatu image and placed the red paper behind, before mounting it on white card.

Outcome

I feel the final design was successful, paying homage to the designers and album artwork of its genre while being unique and representing the style of music. I found that I learned a lot from the project, from the in depth researching to the many layers of two-dimensional design in media.