As part of this brief, we were asked to produce a 12” record sleeve for one of a series of singles provided to us. The objective being to come up with a replacement design which captures the essence of the single. From the singles available I chose to go with ‘Music for Airports 1/2’ by Brian Eno. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the track as I wasn’t a huge listener of this genre. I became even more intrigued by it when I began researching the artist Brian Eno and found out more about his oblique strategy cards.
I was prompted to incorporate these cards into the development of the sleeve to see if it would affect the final output of my design. Once I began looking into other examples of ambient music covers, I quickly began to see a recurring theme of landscape photography. The covers all portrayed a very tranquil and luxurious feeling, which I felt reflected the genre really well.
When listening to the track it conveyed to me feelings of loneliness and isolation, but I also found it very calming. I felt that this effectively reflected the atmosphere of an airport, as they are such big and busy places, it’s very hard not to feel insignificant and isolated when surrounded by so many people. The quote “As ignorable as it is Interesting” was used to describe Eno’s music the irony of this statements is something I wanted to incorporate into my record cover.
In conclusion I very happy with the way this cover turned out. I really enjoyed reading about Brian Eno and having the chance to use his Oblique strategy cards in my design process. I feel the cover captures the themes I had originally set out to fill, and that I made effective use of the oblique strategies in relation to the brief. I feel that I have captured Eno’s minimalistic essence in the record cover and that the design reflects the feelings of calm and loneliness that the track portrays.
