Pantone Covers...

These album covers are so genius...

Graphic designer and artist David Marsh combines two of his interests in a series of prints – Pantone swatch graphics from Adobe Illustrator and classic album covers

DRN

Friendly Parrots

As much as it pains me to be one of those "oh I blogged about that last year" bloggers, I am genuinely happy that Sølve Sundsbø's Perroquet series has found a way to be immortalised and seen by a much wider audience.

Last year I came across the amazing PERROQUET SERIES, which Sølve Sundsbø shot in collaboration with Nick Knight's SHOWStudios. XL Recording's Art Director, Phil Lee, must have been equally taken with the images, as they have been used, or rather incorparated as the art work for Friendly Fires new album, Pala.




In an interview with Creative Review, heres what Phil had to say about the art work:

"Having spent time with the band during the recording process and discussing with them the inspirations and influences for the record there was an obvious theme that ran through it," Lee explains. "The title, PALA, comes from the Aldous Huxley novel, Island, which is about a doomed utopia. It ties in with how they felt about making a second album and being in a band. How things don't turn out how you expect, and how that can be a good thing.

"We looked at various ways utopian life has been represented and visualised in other contexts. We found a wealth of minimal architecture, sterile communities and futuristic worlds but this all felt too cold and clinical for the record – which sounded really warm and full of life.

"During one meeting with the band we were discussing the book and it was mentioned that parrots inhabited the island and how they symbolised tropicana. This seemed a natural progression from people's perception of the band from the first album and their live shows.

"A friend, photographer Tom Beard, mentioned that he had seen some beautiful images of parrots by the photographer Sølve Sundsbø. On seeing these images it was obvious that they would be perfect for this record and the material needed to promote it.

"We approached Sølve's agent art+commerce with our proposal which they then took to Sølve. As this body of work was a personal project for him he was understandably very cautious as to how they would be used. To help our request I mocked up some roughs of how we proposed using the images in the context of the album cover and our campaign."

"While striving to keep the sleeve impactful and making it work on the varying scales from iTunes packshot through to LP and large scale marketing, I needed the logo to be easily visible but not destroy the power and impact of the raw images.

"Choosing a light face (Neutra) and widening the spacing allowed the logo to cover the width of the sleeve, be very prominent and sit comfortable with the image. Deciding that the legibility of the album title was secondary to the strength of the image and awareness of the band name allowed me to propose printing it as a spot varnish."

"The beauty of this was that up close you get the impression of something hidden and play with the angles to get the light to hit it in the right place and reveal the title. This technique combined with the few letters used again allowed me to place the text over the entire width of the sleeve which in turn made it even more effective.

"The choice of a full coverage UV varnish was an obvious choice to enhance the vibrancy of the images and then contrasting that with a matt varnish for the title was an effective combination.

"Not having the luxury of being able to wet proof the job with these 2 finishes was a slight gamble but having a close working relationship with Think Tank who specialise in high end production I felt comfortable that they were confident that what I proposed would work exactly how I envisaged."

And there you have it. The overall end product is a really solid piece of design, and most importantly for album artwork, it is so eye catching and inviting. I imagine it would be quite hard to walk past this cover in a record store, or more likely, on the iTunes website.

DRN

Space Invader!

Lady Gaga took to Twitter last night to unveil the album cover for her latest release, Born This Way. And in keeping with the theme of being Born This Way, Gaga has gone all Sci-Fi for the cover, which to be perfectly honest I think is stunning.

Lady Gaga has become such a force in the music world, and in such a ridiculous short space of time, so naturally there will become a point to over exposure, the feeling of too too much, but I think she has kept the balance quite well. The cover was shot by the wonderful Nick Kinight.

The first single, Born This Way, will be released Friday.

DRN

Hercules gets his house in order

Hercules & Love Affair return with an amazing new track, accompanied by an amazing music and an even more amazing album cover. Basically its all amazing. I love the 90s MTV old school video, perfect for Hercules' new sound, I can't wait to hear the rest of the album, out the end of this month.

DRN

Left Speechless...

This is the artwork for Ciara's new single, Speechless. Unfortunately the single is a bit crap so instead here is her better single, Gimme Dat! It's not as good as WORK, but its still a fun banger.



Anyways I only wanted to post this because of those uhmazing earings! Seriously, she looks stunning, even if she is all blacked out...

DRN

Christina the Terminator

Christina Aguilera reveled the album art for her fourth coming album, Bionic. The lead single of the album, Not Myself Tonight, will be released on March 30th. Which happens to be my birthday! Awesome.

DRN

This is it!

So if your a fan of Christina Aguilera, then you'll know that she had a countdown clock on her website since the weekend announcing that something would be reviled today. And this is it! Or my first impression, "Is this it?". But the clock has been restarted so we can only assume that something else will be reviled tomorrow. Either that or Christina got the Lost Complete Collection boxset for Christmas, and the show has been giving her ideas.

As for the artwork itself, its not bad. Its not amazing. The messy type is kinda old. Maybe thats the look and feel of the forthcoming sound. Still having said all that I can't wait to hear some new music off Bionic.

DRN

Ellie's Artwork

I'm trying my best to get on board with Ellie being the NBT, but shes still not connecting with me! Im not giving up, but I still not getting "it". What I am getting, and loving, is the artwork for Starry Eyed single, the type, the images, the amazing colours, now this I like!

DRN

2 totally different covers...

that totally work!

I love how design is so different in every which way possible, just like the design for the new Weezer album, Raditude, and the cover of Girls Aloud's new live dvd. Both of them do exactly what it says on the tin, the true mark of good design!



I totally think that this photo of a dog mid-flight across a sitting room sums up the word Raditude perfectly. As does Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, who spotted the picture first in an issue of National Geographic, where readers were asked to submit their own photographs. Weezer got in contact with the winning photographer, Jason Neely, who gave them full permission to us the shot of his dog, Sidney, flying through the air! and everyone went home happy! The yellow jagged typography also just kicks the whole concept of "Raditude" off! Its amazing how an album cover can give an idea of what to expect the music inside is going to sound like.



Just like Weezer's album cover gives an idea of what is to be expected inside, the exact same can be said for the Girls Aloud packaging. Pink, gold sequins, 5 sexy girls having fun! what more could you want... All five Girls are joined together, the are more than a group, they are like sisters, sequins sisters if you will? The packaging is young and fun, and totally appeals to its target audience, and I think the whole look works perfectly.

DRN