It’s not just Michael Jackson releasing a deluxe (remixed) version of a classic album. Beck is getting in on the action too with the release of the Deluxe Edition of Odelay. Just a mere 12 years after is original release.

The scribble of a face might help people decipher that it’s actually a breed of dog jumping over the bar. A Komondor, a rare Hungarian breed of dog with thick matted hair. I think Lenny Kravitz has one :)

Here’s another image from the same set. It would have been nice of them to use this photo for the deluxe edition. 12 years later and the dog has moved 20 cm. Photo from here.

If you want more intfo there are plenty of breeder sites about the dogs like this one.

Look how adorable they look as a puppy! LOL cats can get stuffed.

They also come in a variety of colours and shades.

Ok, enough about the dog. But if you think the dog is weird check out this Blob Fish photo I found while researching this.

Ok, back to the cover at hand.

Above is the “Big Active” version of the cover. Which differs from what’s seen on Amazon and other online stores which has the “deluxe edition” watermark. Which was picked up in the comments as probably a sticker/plastic slip that is standard for all Universal deluxe releases.

It reminds me of the “Print is Dead” cover which we featured a while back.

The artwork for the original album has been completely defaced and reworked but it’s essentially the same. Which is an easy analogy to make when talking about the contents of the actual double album.

It’s as if you lent the album to your younger brother and it comes back defaced. You didn’t have a chance to thank him for the “artwork” as he returned it directly to your CD stack 2 years earlier and you didn’t realise. It’s too late to do anything about it so you just end up smashing something of his and hiding it under his bed as payback.

Here’s a few more pieces from the original reworked.

The cover was deisned by Big Active’s Mat Maitland. The same guy behind “The Information” cover. Big Active have also reworked their site and now has direct links to the work! This means I can link directly to where I ripped their images from like here.

There are also reported in Pitchfork that placeholder lyrics were wrongly printed on the first run of the album.

“It turns out the “Deluxe Edition” reissue of Beck’s sampledelic Odelay that shipped this week came with a lyric booklet full of mistakes. According to a press release, “The first pressing of the recent Odelay: Deluxe Edition was found to have gone out with un-proofed lyrics that were taken from a lyrics website as placeholders for layout purposes. Beck apologizes for this unfortunate oversight and is making arrangements for the corrected lyrics to be available gratis via Beck.com. Subsequent pressings of the Odelay: Deluxe Edition will also include the corrected lyrics.”

So if you have a version of that it might be worth something down the track.

The album has also spawned some fan made film clips. These weren’t clips created in response to a competition to create a film clip but actual ones created for fun! Imagine that.

And if you enjoyed those two then you probably wont enjoy this one.

You gotta love fans.

This caught my eye while browsing on Amazon. The complex screen printed shapes spell out the band name in an abstract way, although this is only really evident in the posters.

The cover and the inside illustrations are by Stevie Gee (represented by Stem Agency) who’s illustrative style is usually more hand drawn. The style reminds me of the Dutch graffiti artist Delta.

The first single of the album Hurricane has a similar art direction but this one feels more militaristic which I think ties in with the message of the song.

The artworks feature no text but come with a transparent sticker to alert shoppers as to what’s inside. The font, used on the actual CD and linear notes, is a distressed Vag Rounded (Gill Sans) font which seems to have been stamped treated to give varying weights. It’s nice and subtle although you would mistake it for a printing error looking at my photos.

The 12 inch had a white version of the cover. Although personally, I like the black version better.

Athlete also released a 2 disc (CD/DVD) limited edition book. This seems to be a popular thing for labels these days, with Beck, Badly Drawn Boy and Angus & Julia Stone all releasing fancy limited edition double disc packs recently.

The cover is hard board with the design embossed on it, which makes it hard to photograph.

The inside of the book is a series of illustrations by Stevie Gee, Big Active and the band. Here’s just a couple of the 20+ pages.

I found it funny that in the first scene of the 25 min documentary on the DVD, the band are asking why they are doing a DVD and quoted saying “We don’t want to do one if it’s going to be lame.” Luckily it’s not lame, as opposed to the DVD Beck released with The Information.

I’ve always liked both The Chemical Brothers music and their artwork. Push The Button is no exception. I was about to talk about their latest (and pretty damn good) album ‘We Are the Night’ but thought I’d wait to see if any more singles are released before delving into that one.

What I didn’t realize before starting research on Push the Button was there were so much artwork created for it. There’s three singles, each with a second disc and a colour variation, a live album, ITV and even two fan based bootleg remix albums! All kept in the same iconic styling and each supporting the iconic look of the album cover. And that’s not even counting press ads, posters, flyers.

The style of artwork reminds me of Soviet propaganda posters of the post WW1 era. Their limited colour palette and stark imagery stands out in a CD rack of over produced imagery.

Each singles artwork has a theme and is carried across both covers. The second cover was created the UK release where two discs were released. The rest of the world received just the single disc.

Galvanize was the first single and is themed “Construction” or maybe “Destruction” depending on how you read the artwork.

Each single also had a alternate coloured cover. These were used to denote the 1-2 track promo copies of the album. Usually sent to press.

And the UK 2nd disc cover. This UK version is one one of my fav from the series.

Believe came next and again the theme can be read differently. The megaphone prompts me to think of protests and the spreading of information while the siren’s provoke images of warnings and dictatorship. (Deep I know!)

The coloured promo version.

And the UK 2nd disc.

The last single was The Boxer. The international disc seems like a celebration or political rally while the 2nd UK disc feels like a political rally going back to my statement that the artwork could have been inspired by Soviet propaganda posters.
You could also say it looks like the Myspace logo guys protesting about how crap their site is.

The alternate colour here is a punchy orange.

The UK 2nd disc definitely feels more political and was the only cover to use a script font rather than the bold, block text on all the others.

Artwork for the download only Live05 album also continued the art direction of the album.

The artwork was even adapted for an interactive TV promotion.

This was in the UK where ITV is actually used unlike in Australia where it’s still in its infancy. More details here.

You can download some of the artwork as wallpapers and icons on The Chemical Brothers website. But with so much artwork out there why only offer two different desktops? Oh well. EMI were kind enough to send us print ready files of the covers so I can create my own.

A collective of DJ’s produced a remix album as a bootleg called “Flip the Switch” which recreated the artwork perfectly. They did this for the main album seen below.

And the Believe EP.

This was the same group behind the Prodigy remix project the year before.

I nearly forgot to mention that the team behind the artwork was Tappin Gofton who have produced the last 3 Chemical Brothers covers, not to mention Coldplay’s X&Y. They commissioned Big Active’s Kam Tang to illustrate the covers. Kam was also responsible for the latest Gnarls Barkley covers too.

Sadly their website has no information and they’ve kept a low profile on Google.

One of the beauties of talking about the album artwork is you don’t need to have listened to the album or even know the band to make a comment. While it helps in some cases it doesn’t make too much difference here with The Enemy’s debut album.

Big Active’s artwork looks great (‘yellow and black’ always look great together) and translates really well to other mediums like this press ad below.

I also like simple use of die cut to show through the text on the vinyl.

While I can’t say I’m a fan of the music (or the band’s name, it’s one down from Maroon 5), I do like this series of covers for Vega4′s debut album and subsequent singles. One major aspect of Big Active’s work is that they rarely do a single execution. There is always a series of interlinked images each complimenting the others. This is great for me posting as there’s lots to show.

I’m guessing this is an alternate cover for the album below.

Doesn’t this make you want to run out with a bunch of plastic bags and your camera and have a go?

Set design by Lyndsay Milne and photography by Annabel Elston. Annabel’s shot an outdoor furniture series in 2004 for Tord Boontje. I’m guessing this may have been a reason she was chosen for this cover shoot.

My only real criticism is that it reminds me of Stefan Sagmeister’s “Things I learned in my life so far” series from 2005. Here’s one of several sentences he has created.

It’s fresh in my mind as I just watched his inspiring TED talk last week. He’s not only a great designer he’s a great speaker too.

You also have to admire the skills of their manager for launching their single “Life Is Beautiful” in the US via Grey’s Anatomy. Check it on Last.FM it’s their most popular track by far.

Just like Snow Patrol, (same producer) the band’s enjoying much success by lending their track to an episode. Take note bands you need more than a Myspace page to make it big.

Lastly, while researching this cover I noticed the band is actually promoting a different cover for the album on their Myspace page. An uninspired white version. I’m not sure if this is the same album or this is just the US cover? Forgettable and unoriginal to say the least. I doubt Big Active was involved with this and this was an in-house job to make the cover more “sellable” to the female audience.

Keane’s second studio album and another fantastic album cover and music series from Big Active. Illustrator Sanna Annukka did a great job with all the subsequent single releases and the DVD booklet. Check her website for more examples of art for Keane.

Below are the five singles from the album. My fav is the skull one. Why ’cause Skulls are cool. If you can’t get enough skull action check out Skull A Day.

Below is the UK DVD packaging which came in the form of a hard bound book.

This car crash of objects melded together is intriguing. I feel like I’m in a contemporary art installation.

While it looks like an accident you can bet it was days of work to get them just right. And if you were to try and pull something off similar it wouldn’t have the same creative spark these covers have. The photography is by UK photography Dan Tobin Smith who has done some fantastic work.

Again this concept was carried across to the singles and other releases and again this is another Big Active production.

And here is how the CD booklets folded out to reveal the full artwork. I believe they shot these separately then combined after. Otherwise it’d be impossible to light and photograph at the required size.

What I love about this cover is how the identity was carried across throughout all the other releases. They are dark yet appealing at the same time. Like a twisted kids fairy tale. All credit to Thomas Grunfeld who created the original creatures featured on the cover. They are from his series called Misfits which you can find more info here.

This was produced by Big Active by art director Mat Maitland who was responsible for Beck’s The Information.

Simian has since split up to pursue other musical interests but at least they have this beautiful series of sleeves to remind them of the good times.

The packaging for Beck’s latest album The Information consists of a blank grid cover and a random set of stickers for each release designed by various artists. The idea is to mix and match as you choose to create your own custom cover.

If there was any reason to actually buy a physical CD in this digital age, this is it.

Here are some custom covers found on the Beck Gallery site and Amazon:

Unbelievably, because this may give the album an “unfair advantage”, the album is not eligible for the UK charts. Shouldn’t the industry be supporting this so they actually have people wanting to buy the CDs? It baffles me.

Cover art by Beck. Art direction and design by Matt Maitland/Gerard Saint at Big Active with Beck. Sticker art by Jody Barton, Beck, Juliette Cezar, Estell & Simon, David Foldvari, Genevieve Gauckler, Michael Gillette, Jasper Goodall, Mercedes Helnwein, Han Lee, Matt Maitland, Ari Michelson, Parra, Melanie Pullen, Gay Rie[***]aleksey Shirokov, Will Sweeney, Kam Tang, Adam Tullie, Kensei Yabuno, Vania Zouravliov, 2006.

Update: Check Pinebenders Design Your Own Cover sleeve designed back in 2002.