When given the brief to redesign the album artwork of what can only be described as music ‘classics’ I decided to write down my initial reactions.
The songs we were given are all foundations of their respective genres and can be seen as musical landmarks, despite this a lot of these songs have been lost in time, overtaken and not given the respect that they deserve. With record sales at new high its perfect time to give them their spotlight again. As a newbie to the record collecting game I can (semi)speak as an insider in the ‘trend.’ I feel like when re designing the cover it is important to modernise it but can’t alienate the original design and importantly has to stay true to the original and the music it represents. Even I have had moments of weakness and wanted a certain record just because it has a ‘nice’ cover as opposed to buying it for the music, I personally wouldn’t want my re-designed cover to fall in this category. As, yes might look nice but they don’t always represent the artist or the songs. I personally feel it has to connect with the music – if they music is uncomfortable make the record sleeve and uncomfortable. I know this is an over analysis of an art form that I have very little experience In but wrong or not its my initial reactions to the brief.
Beginning the Design
For me the obvious first step was to listen to all the songs. I then picked the four that I enjoyed the most and felt that I could draw the most inspiration just from the songs. I took these four; Miles Davis – So What, The Dammed – New Rose, Music for Airports – Brian Eno, Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus. I then gave a quick research into their covers and the band less than 5 minutes for each (less for Bauhaus and the Dammed and I was already familiar) I then listened to the songs once again and as soon and each track was done I gave a very basic thumbnail sketch for each, this was to gauge my initial reaction to the tracks and the brief in one.
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- So What – Jazz isn’t my preferred style of music and despite enjoying the song found it hard to go away from standard Images – music note and saxophone. Didn’t feel like I could do the song justice.
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- New rose I immediately drew a line down the centre to signify a crack, somehow felt like it had to be broken. I then added a rose to go with the obvious idea.
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- Music for Airports I found this song very peaceful and tranquil. Felt like it automatically put me into a certain frame and way of thinking. The drawing for this was very minimal with only simple drawings. I felt that this coincided with my more recent designs as they have been very minimal. I wanted to stray away from this and go for something relatively different.
Bela Lugosi’s Dead
Being familiar to this track I already had some pre-conceived ideas in my head but when coming to the drawing tried my hardest to force these out of my head. With this I was pleasantly surprised, I felt personally that it was the most interesting change from the original and was interested to see where it went. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of choosing the one that I already knew but honestly felt that the semi modern and geometric design established was the most interesting.
Next I made a Visual board, this consisted of images that I felt related to the band, the song and the style. I looked at the classic movie posters of Bela Lugosi, also looked at modern bands that have drawn inspiration from Bauhaus with the likes of The Cure and Nine Inch Nails in order to see the modern takes on the style. In this research phase I seen how much the band copied the style of Bela Lugosi’s movies and how much their image was in homage to him and the style that his films represented.
Visual Image Board
After this I broke out the sketch book and started to formulate a design.
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- Intial Idea – Played around with Vampire, colours and themes. But took major Inspiration with bat shape.
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- Took shape developed from bat wing and played around with it.
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- Took shape developed from bat wing and began to formulate a pattern.
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- Done a very basic sketch encouprtating it into a cover, came up with the idea of cutting it out to show something behind it.
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- Took shape on to the computer and played around with the pattern and came up with a final idea.
I Knew I wanted to have something appear behind the pattern and wanted to incorporate something that paid homage to Bela Lugosi and his films in the same way the band did. This is when I came up with the idea of stylising a list of all his movies. I then took this and made it into an inner sleeve of the record cover. I then tried to emulate an opaque version of the Rorschach test to ‘Dirty’ it up in the same vein of the original cover. I then took the final pattern and cut it out of black card and put together my final design.
The Main inspiration is drawn from the wing of a bat with an extreme homage being paid to Bela Lugosi. I decided to go with a very geometric form to modernise it and using the inner and outer sleeve to form the final design adds some theatre to the sleeve and makes the buyers experience of the music more immersive. I decided to go against using colour as I feel I doesn’t suit the music, it is very bleak but still has beauty within it and wanted to try and achieve a beautiful cover using bleak tones.
Final Design
