Athlete: Beyond The Neighbourhood
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.
Taylem:
The Graffiti artist you are probably thinking of is the Dutch artist Delta
http://www.deltainc.nl
# 01 Oct 07 at 9:27 am
Ash:
Hey Taylem,
thats exactly who I had in my head. While Delta’s stuff is more 3D it just reminded me of what I was seeing here.
thanks for that
# 01 Oct 07 at 12:40 pm
Trouty:
Ever seen the cover to Hawkwind’s In Search Of Space?
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6568/hw02_iso.jpg
# 03 Nov 07 at 3:08 am
t:
Your ‘distressed VAG Rounded’ actually appears to be a very thin variant of Gill Sans.
# 14 Nov 07 at 1:26 pm
skunk:
VAG Rounded is copywritten by Volkswagen Audi Group so I doubt it’ll get used for any album covers. :)
# 21 Feb 08 at 9:33 pm
reidmix:
Reminds me of OMD
Dazzle Ships: http://images.google.com/images?q=OMD%20Dazzle%20Ships&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi
Peel Sessions: http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=OMD+Dazzle+Peel+Sessions&btnG=Search+Images
# 06 Jul 08 at 1:46 pm