Pip Brown, the New Zealand-born multi-instrumentalist better known as Ladyhawke, has overcome a fair bit of misfortune in her young life. At the age of ten she was diagnosed with a disease called erysipeloid, which is common in seagulls but hadn’t been seen in humans in 20 years. If that’s not bad enough, she’s allergic to all forms of antibiotics and penicillin, which complicated her treatment so much that she ended up in a coma.

After coming close to death, she recovered only to discover in the coming years that she had Asberger’s syndrome, a form of autism that makes social interaction difficult. So how did a sickly, socially awkward New Zealand teen go onto become on of the most exciting musical artists we have today? Well a formidable talent, drive and sense of adventure have come in handy.

Brown was only a teenager in New Zealand when she formed the band Two Lane Blacktop with some friends. They went on to play at legendary New York club CBCG. Then on an impulse, Brown moved to Melbourne where she formed the band Teenager with Nick Littlemore (Empire of the Sun).

But it was her decision to leave Teenager and focus on her solo project, Ladyhawke, that shot her to prominence. Ladyhawke is named after the 1985 cult film, in which a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer played the cursed title character.

Bird references seem fitting, given that Brown was nearly killed by a seagull’s disease and that her whole life since represents a phoenix-like resurrection. She says the name represents the way she sees herself – as “a pop superwoman creating radio-friendly songs with a single bound”. Either which way, it’s a killer name.

Rightly or wrongly, Ladyhawke’s 1980’s influenced dance music has seen her grouped with other contemporary singers such as La Roux, Little Gaga, Sia and Little Boots. All have distinctive looks, visual style and more than a taste of androgyny.

Which brings us to Ladyhawke’s cover art. The illustrated watercolour and ink drawings that feature on her records and in her music videos have helped define her brand.  They’re by 31-year old Melbourne artist Sarah Larnach, who is not only Brown’s collaborator but also her best friend.

Larnach first saw Brown at a Melbourne party in 2004, where she immediately noticed her “mopey posture, unlike anything I’d seen on a girl.” Speaking to The Independent in an article about their friendship, Larnach recalled: “She seemed really cool and I immediately wanted her to be my friend, but I didn’t want to freak her out, so I didn’t even talk to her.”

They lived close together and soon became friends. “I had a large of group of friends, but never a best friend, so it was great meeting Sarah,” says Brown. “Straight off the bat I found her hilarious. Sense of humour is key for me – if I find someone completely unwitty, I can’t even bluff getting along with them. She is sharp and intelligent and I enjoy every second of conversations with her.”

Larnach was a slack student at art school and lacked confidence in her work. Brown observes: “She is the biggest procrastinator in the world, but I always thought she was an incredible artist – she has a brilliant imagination. When she first plucked up the courage to show me some of her art I was so impressed. I ended up posing for her for heaps of paintings, so I became a bit like a muse, though I wouldn’t quite call myself that.”

It’s a fair description however, as the collaboration between the two has created a career for Larnach. “As soon as I met Pip I knew she was going to be really significant, not just in my life, but in general, and I knew I’d do anything to help her. Maybe I’ve helped her a bit, but she has helped me a great deal.”

Holy god. The first thing that I thought when I saw this cover was: “what a fearsome thoroughbred.”

Photographer Jean Paul Goude took this photo in 1978 for a New York Magazine profile of model Grace Jones. The article (and the accompanying photographs) would help to transform her into a pop singer and gay icon. When Island Life – the punnily-titled compilation of her biggest singles for Island Records – was released in 1986, this image was pulled out of the bottom draw and dusted off to create a classic album cover.

Some more background on the original image has emerged with the release (the puns continue) of So Far So Goude, by Jean-Paul Goude with Patrick Mouries. At the time of the photo Goude was Jones’ lover and she was his muse. Before they fell out, they furthered each other’s career in a way neither could have imagined.

“Initially, she was flattered by all of my attention,” says Goude. “And she’s no dope – Grace is an opportunist and she knew my vision was good for her career. Initially, she let herself be taken over, but then she suspected that I had only fallen in love with her image.”

If you’re wondering how Jones’ body can do this pose, the simple answer is that it can’t. Goude employs what is technically referred to as “visual trickery”. Here’s how it was done:

Here’s a picture of somebody else trying the pose:

Describing the concept, Goude says “…unless you are extraordinarily supple, you cannot do this arabesque” (the ballet pose in the picture). “The main point is that Grace couldn’t do it, and that’s the basis of my entire work: creating a credible illusion.”

Apart from this album cover the only thing I previously knew about Jones was that she was good friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80’s. It kind of makes sense – they both look as if they have emerged from an alternate reality where infants are breastfed steroids and the puny are used as toothpicks. 25 years later he’s the conservative Governor of California while she’s still drunkenly touring the world and releasing albums with cover art like this (2008’s Hurricane):

Australia is falling in love with Empire Of The Sun, Luke Steele (The Sleepy Jackson) & Nick Littlemore (PNAU). Their track Walking On A Dream has been storming the airwaves here and to our excitement on a slow wet Friday, Empire Of the Sun have given us a look at their new artwork, we just had to share it with you. We will follow this up with a more detailed report shortly. But for now, we like what we see!

While you are waiting, make sure you check out their stunning new video for Walking On A Dream. The video was shot recently in Shanghai, China by Josh Logue from Mathematics.

To download a remix, or more info check out their: Official Site, or Myspace

The smaller the budget the bigger the restrictions, and the smarter you have to be to solve the client’s problem. This design solution for Murmur Records from Bunch is just that. Iconic, visually arresting and cheap to produce. These debut releases from Murmur are bound to be collectors items.

The cover above is from the first release from Rekleiner titled “Some People”, which sold out in a week. Future releases will keep the same cover design while the label colour changes. Here’s the next two releases for “Reclick & Nick Curly” and “Bearweasel”.

This will be a pain in the ass for the colour blind DJ’s out there.

They could also mix it up by inversing the cover with white on black! In fact here’s one I prepared earlier :)

Looks pretty sweet but this might increase the printing costs?

The ID for Murmur is carried across into posters which are more understated.

I first came to know Bunch from their collective logo design site Made in Bunch. It’s still going and is a great example of how the design community love to share. Name another industry that shares at this level for no profit or reason?

Bunch are a talented bunch

This is one of my favs. Maybe because I love bread. Mmm bread… other white meat!

I spoke to Bunch who were kind enough to send me some rejected/initial designs for the Murmur ID. It’s quite interesting to see the different executions and how different the final direction is. All ideas revolved around the die cut in the middle of the vinyl. Thanks Bunch for sharing these.

Offtopic: I’d love to get this type treatment as a wall sticker like the one’s at Blik. Check out the Threadless set are prepare to spend your cash. Although they don’t deliver to Australia which is lame.

In fact that’s how I imagine the Murmur office reception area to be. Something like this below.

I always feel the urge to fake the fact I haven’t heard of these artists in a feeble attempt to sound knowledgeable and up to date. But sadly all I can say is I really like the cover art. It fits perfect with the music while being original and visually striking. It’s also campaignable. I can see this style being explored further with posters, albums, singles and other medium without having to repeat the same exact visual.

Rafale are a duo coming from French britain (St Brieuc). This is their 1st 12″ with 2 remixes on it: Tacteel (from TTC) and Tepr. So I feel a little better I haven’t heard of them considering I’d need to be a regular at the clubs to have heard their tracks. After sampling the tunes on the label’s Myspace page it’s not too bad.

The artwork was done by Akroe (AKA Etienne Bardelli) who looks to be a very famous Parisan designer (previously a graffitti artist) who’s done everything from logos to store installations to fashion spreads. Kinda like Australia’s Ken Done only much cooler. His work has a distinct style but he’s not afraid to mix it up like some designers.

There is a great interview with Akroe here on Guillotine. I’ve linked up the english version but French is also available. There’s also a 120 page book about his work available here.

Here’s the back of the album which is a nice extenstion of the front art.

Also here’s what the actual vinyl looks like. Sadly we weren’t sent these to photograph. I had to grab it off the Myspace page again. Note to labels. We love freebies :)

If I had to describe the album art to someone over the phone I’d say “It looks like Cousin It from the Adam’s Family came out of the closet and was attending the Sydney Mardi Gras.”

With over 12 years of design heritage behind it, a design for Bugged Out! Classics is like doing the “Best Of” for bands like U2, Beatles and the like. You don’t want to replicate what has been done previously and you want this to stand on its own.

Rather than fake being hip and know the UK club scene I’ve pasted text from their about page on Bugged Out! website which explains what the hell it is.

Bugged Out is an all night electro/techno party that takes place at The End in London, Sankeys in Manchester and The Loft in Barcelona. We also visit other clubs in the UK and around the world. We are over 12 years old (which in club years means we can grow a nice moustache) and had LFO at our first party in November 1994 and have had everyone from Daft Punk, Green Velvet, The Chemical Brothers, Miss Kittin, Ellen Allien, Tiga to Vitalic over the years.

If clubs were people, Bugged Out! would certainly be able smack down most of it’s competitors based on it’s creds. Classics is a compilation with each of the 3 CDs presented as an ASCII cover all wrapped up in a lovely digi pack with a booklet and poster thrown in for good measure. I’m not a fan of folded CD posters though. They always look shite on your wall due to the number of folds.

I do however love the simplicity of the ASCII with the Dayglo like paper. The UK design group Zip have looked after the creative direction for Bugged Out! for the last 9 years and I think this is the best work for the project to date.

Here’s the fold out poster which chronicles the design history of the club.

I found this album on CR’s blog. The lead in for the article sums up exactly what we at Sleevage have been talking about for a while.

Already this year several musical packages have landed on our desks and made us very happy – not least because they conspire to give a clear indication that budgets for music packaging are on the up. It would seem that the big labels are starting to take note of the examples smaller labels such as Motive Sounds (CR March 07) or Lex Records (CR December 03) have set in recent years: lavish, interesting packaging makes the product desirable… Of course, downloading an album or a single track for peanuts is far more appealing than spending £15 on a mass-produced plastic case with a cheaply printed piece of paper inside and a plastic disc. However, make something a little bit special – and there’s a far better chance we’ll seek it out to buy and subsequently treasure.

For those wanting to do their own ASCII text there are plenty of online tools. I made this Sleevage one using this ASCII generator.

I’m surprised that this ASCII hasn’t been used before for a CD cover. It’s easy to produce and cheap to print not to mention stands out from the crowd, it must have just been overlooked.

P.S: We apologise for the lack of updates recently. We’ve been busy planting trees, saving kittens and coaching little league. But we’ve grown tired of that and are back to keep blogging about CD covers and music.

A perfect look for a modern ‘electro-soul’ band gaining its inspiration from 70′s P funk. What I particularly like about this cover is how real it looks. You can instictively tell straight away that the image wasn’t generated by a computer, that it was created by hand.

Rachel Thomas created the sets out of materials ranging in texture from styrofoam to perspex. Still life photographer Dan Tobin Smith lit and shot the objects. Design and the custom typeface for the band was created by Andrew Murabito.

Back cover:

CD print:

Love Ya Single Cover:
(Created in Perspex. Letters were suspended in front of the lips which stood approx 5 foot high.)

Stereo Single Cover:
Created using Perspex and rubber (cords)

What Am I Fighting For Single Cover:
(Created using Perspex)

After waiting in vein for the designers to send us supporting images for this release we decided to post it without any direction from the designers. We missed Hot Chip’s Aussie tour but with their new album “Made in the Dark” being released tomorrow we thought it’d time nicely.

Now for those that thought the “Push the Button” had a lot of supporting artwork get ready for no less than 23 different pieces of artwork all stemming from the one album.

This would be a lesson for all designers out there. Don’t present more than one concept to a client. The client will always want a combination of the two or in this case just want you to produce them all. The concept could have been to replicate the repetitive nature of their single “Over and Over” and just keep pumping out covers.

My favorite is this 12″ embossed cover. Very sexy.

Here’s the 12 inch open.

While’ I’d love to add comments to each piece there are just too many. I present below the myriad of artwork created for the album, it’s singles and various formats.

Starting with the first single “Over And Over”.

This photographic one stands out a little. Maybe they accidentally sent the wrong file to print :)

I’m not sure on the significance of the cake.

The second single was “Boy From School” which went in a slightly different direction to the “Over & Over” artwork.

This last one if my fav of the “Boy From School” series.

And the last single from the album “Colours” featured even more variations on the theme.

Phew! You’re fingers probably sore just from the scrolling. I can imagine the designers were glad to see the end of this album :)

You really have to feel for the collectors out there. Sometimes there’s just too much stuff and unless you’re well funded you’ll slowly go insane knowing your collection will never be complete.

The visual tie in with the block with the plank through it is something the designer Wallzo has used himself personally for an MTV project so I’m not sure of this is exclusively for”Hot Chip”. We’ll email them again and try and uncover the rationale behind this series.

My introduction to Hot Chip was through their film clip rather than the artwork. This clip has the same free feeling that the OK Go clip had.

And if that wasn’t enough there was even different artwork for the promo version of the album. It’s a colourful “Karma Sutra” for lumberjacks.

I look forward to hearing the reason behind having so many variations on the album artwork. I can’t recall another album going to this extent and can’t think of a valid reason for doing so. That said it does make interesting viewing

No one belongs together in unholy 80′s union more than Duran Duran and Patrick Nagel. One look at a Nagel print I think of Andrew McCarthy knocking back a Chi Chi after a solid game of Frogger wondering whether to go with the white denim or white sports jacket with the pastel polo…or maybe the pink tee?…

Patrick Nagel designed the cover to Duran Duran‘s American top ten (Australian #1) album RIO in his innovative trademark fashion – commonly described as a distinctive mix of art-deco and Japanese style woodblock.“The Nagel Woman” became something of a phenomenon in the 1980′s, primarily from Nagel’s work being regularly featured in Playboy magazine and patronage by film studios, fashion/music magazines and corporate clients like IBM.

Nagel’s process is one of creating more with less. He is often said to have started with a line drawing of a photograph then taken out elements he found unnecessary (Nagel figures often lack detailed digits and extremities) then adding large blocks of matte pastel and cropping the frame at a slightly skewed angle.

An alternate Nagel cover for a 2001 re-issue.

Nagel was something of a contemporary art phenomenon in the 80′s – if you grew up in this era chances are you came across his art, or a derivative of it, without even knowing it. The squared eyes, pinks, puces, mauves (I swear to God he never used a primary colour – apparently Nagel used more Paynes grey than any other painter – for an excellent recollection of Nagel’s practices head over to The Art History Archive) off the shoulder poses, Brigitte Nielsen haircuts – it’s all Nagel.

If you want something to look like the 80′s, chances are you’ll borrow from Nagel – those of you who are familiar with the GTA Vice City artwork (you’re reading a blog about album covers, you’re probably supposed to be working, I’m sure you’ve never played a computer game) will notice Stephen Bliss’s homage in the awesome cover/booklet art from the game.

In a tragic, but morbidly humorous turn, Nagel (who apparently enjoyed his fair share of booze, cigs and fast food and hated exercise) suffered a fatal heart attack after a celebrity ‘aerobathon’. Thankfully he didn’t associate with the type of folks who might prop him up with sunglasses and run around pretending he was still alive, slamming his nuts into poles and pushing him from speedboats.

So who better to pair up with the 80′s biggest coke/glam mullet-fringe titans than the Toulouse Latrec of the skinny ties? Even Russel Mulchahy pulled a few Nagel moves in the video for Rio (pre – Highlander).

For those of you who really want to live like ’80′s guy’ – here is what I believe to be a reliable Chi Chi recipe – now go and conquer wall street.
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup ice
2 oz vodka
1/2 oz blue curaçao
1/2 oz cream of coconut
1/2 cup fresh or canned pineapple
scoop of vanilla ice cream
chunk of pineapple for garnish
PREPARATION:
Pour all ingredients into a blender.
Blend until smooth.
Pour into a chilled margarita or highball glass.
Garnish with the pineapple.
If the mix turns out too thick add juice; too thin add ice or ice cream.

The artwork was also used for the single cover of “Hungry Like The Wolf”

Here’s a recent 2007 interview with Malcolm.

Design of the sleeve was done by Malcom Garrett of Assorted Images who also studied at the same school as Peter Saville.

I’ll leave you all with this Professor Farnsworth mashup.

When I saw how awful the latest MOS cover looked with it’s gold and green I realized I was sent their previous compilation and forgot to post it. And it’s much better looking with a better back story. I apologise for being a few months late with this.

I like the little birdy as the record needle. It’s a nice simple touch that might have been forgotten. I also like that the cover is quite quite restrained while the rest of the packages is packed to the brim with doodles.

Here’s the entire package. Lucky there’s stuff all copy to incorporate.

I can see this cover being one of the more popular ones for MOS fans. They can come home and stare at this for ages tripping over the characters they see until they eventually fall asleep the next day. It sure beats looking at a minimalist type execution or a over polished photo of a chick in a bikini.

Here’s some original artwork Kristofer sent me. I’m pretty sure that’s him in the bottom left of the middle image.

If the style looks familiar that’s because the cover was done by Kristofer Strom. The genius behind that animated clip earlier in the year for Minilogue.

MOS also commissioned Kristofer to create a TV ad for the cover. Which at 22 seconds must have been a walk in the park compared to his previous epic.

If someone asked me to create a clip for MOS I would have somehow worked in a bunch of bikini clad hotties into it. Next time Kristofer!

Menomena’s Friend or Foe is another cover that’s covered in doodles. Which makes a change as most “doodles” in the music industry are behind the scenes :)

Although M.I.A.’s music can easily stand on it’s own, it’s the artwork which really completes the picture. A collage of bright colours, retro patterns and heavily pixelated type can be found in a variety of media, from her music videos, website and fashion to the visuals at her live performances.

I was lucky enough to catch one of her shows recently and the visuals, which are tailor made for each song took the performance to another level (see video for first single ‘Boyz’ below).

It’s hard to say who exactly is responsible for all of this but it appears to be a collaboration between M.I.A. herself, Cassette Playa (Carri Mundane) and Steve Loveridge (Steve also designed the sleeve for M.I.A.’s first album Arular). Most notable in the artwork and videos for latest album Kala is the work of Cassette Playa. Carri Mundane AKA Cassette Playa is making waves in the U.K. for her part in the London Rave revival (she also dresses the Klaxons).

The cover for Kala looks like it could have been made on early version of Photoshop. Maybe a take on roughly made club flyers made by people who’s job isn’t making club flyers. Regardless, the artwork absolutely complements M.I.A’s sound.

I thought this would be a timely post as this album is to be released in the USA on Monday (23rd Oct) so for the first time I can post a cover of an album before it’s release. Well in the USA at least.

Muscles is one of Modular Record’s newest signings and the covers were designed and illustrated by Modular regular Jonathan Zawada. You can check out the 3 title tracks on his Myspace page.

Here’s the two singles off the album

I actually prefer the “Ice Cream” and “Sweaty” covers better than the album. I guess the single word titles were easier to translate.

Here’s the film clip for “Sweaty”, which is nothing special. Note: Searching for sweaty and muscles on Google Images and Youtube opens up a door to w world I don’t want to see :)

By itself the Fundamental cover is just a nice minimal designed cover. It’s only when put together with all supporting artwork for promos, font, singles, DVDs, merchandise, posters do you see the strength in having a simple yet interesting visual direction for an album. All credit to Farrow Design for their ability to keep the neon light look fresh with each iteration.

The neon track listing was actually shot as one photo. A steel frame with interchangeable rows was created to allow track names to be easily moved, as the track order was undecided at the time of construction. The neon work was constructed by A1 Designs. All photography was done by serial Farrow collaborator John Ross who also did the Manic Street Preachers cover we featured.

The first single of the album “I’m With Stupid” kept the theme going nicely. A custom neon like font was created specifically for the album.

The second single off the album “Minimal” went with a white background.

The black version below was for the DVD. I really like this look.

The Boys also made good use of the neon lights for multiple promo shots for various media.

It’s great seeing the entire package together rather than have nice cover art and then separate promo shots. I bet they don’t want to see another neon light for a while though.

On October 8th, 2007, Pet Shop Boys will release Disco 4, the latest in their series of remix albums. the PSB remix tracks from The Killers, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Madonna, Atomizer and Rammstein. Only two tracks by the Boys, “Integral” and “I’m with Stupid” will be included.

The cover art features fluorescent lights arranged to form the numeral 4.

The inner sleeve shows the lights jumbled up, or remixed. How cleaver!

This piece reminds me of Dan Flavin’s minimalistic fluorescent light work.

And if you’re a fan of Little Britain you can check out the film clip for “I’m With Stupid” which parodies the PSB’s visual history.

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.

Los Angeles-raised, Brooklyn-based Brent Rollins designed this cover for one of the freshest sounds of today, Baltimore act Spank Rock.

Brent has been deeply involved producing iconic hip hop imagery over the years. From way back with Spike Lee’s Mo Better Blues and the Boyz N Da Hood logos to his recent involvement in the Stussy World Tour (where I first heard about him). He has also designed covers for Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Dilated Peoples, Gang Starr, Quannum Projects, Blackalicioius, covers for Tokion magazine as well as being part of the Ego Trip collective and holding numerous art shows. With so many crap covers out there in the hip hop corner of record stores, there are the few like Brent who are holding it down.

Works by Brent Rollins

I post this particular cover because it worked for me when I first saw it. I was drawn in with the YoYoYo’s and wanted to find out more about the group. The detail and style of the type and the low key black/gold tone with the cut and paste imagery made me pay attention to it. Noticing the hip hop references made me wonder what kind of sound it would be. Being curious, I tracked down Brent who was generous enough to provide in-depth insight into the story behind the cover and the design process which I will post here in full.

Brent: “There was another cover created for it by someone else. i think Darko from the group did it. (The type treatment for that cover ended up on a tee shirt). The label didn’t feel that the original cover was iconic enough, or inspire enough curiousity at first sight, so it was scrapped. They brought up the Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks” cover. Not so much to be a source of direct inspiration, but because of that cover’s cultural relevance. The idea of the album heralding a voice for a new generation, and being so complete from an image standpoint. The folks at Big Dada had the marketing savvy to see Spank Rock’s “Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo…” as one of those rare generation-defining recordings. I tend to agree. The music is so fresh and different and naughty and yet naive, experimental yet accessible and that is a dream assignment.

References

Originally I wanted the color scheme of the cover to evoke Eric B and Rakim’s “Paid In Full” but at some point I took any instances of green out of the cover and left the gold and black.

Early type only cover

The fact that the title of the album is actually just endless “Yo yo yo’s…” going on to infinity made it somewhat obvious; right there the title is pretty much dictating that it’s gonna be a typographic solution. At first it was gonna be just type with a few weird elements floating in and out of the letters, but Naeem (Spank Rock) made mid-process request to include their faces on the cover. He was being kind of shy about appearing on the front, and then he came to his senses and realized how much girls he could get from having his mug on the front, so he made the executive decision! But the joy for me really was in playing with the typography and then illustrating the content of the music.

I’ll make cover art from whatever I can find… the legs and other elements are scanned from men’s magazines. I had the gold chain laying around from a previous photoshoot so I put it on my scanner. The photos of Spank Rock and Alexxx are taken by friends of theirs and given to me. The name “Spank Rock” were original letterforms I created. So things came from all kinds of disparate sources. I just had to make it all work.

Early logo and type tests

Of interest to designer and design geeks, the most challenging part was creating the plate for the fifth color. The cover is actually 4 color process with gold ink added. And the gold ink is sort of duotoned over cmyk gold color. The ink is integrated into the gradations and subtle shades of the images. That’s not easy to create, even via computer. In fact, it was a pain in the ass. If the metallic coverage was only in solid areas, it would’ve been 10x easier. But of course I took the difficult route.

That’s about it I guess. There was that one time when I was wrestling an alligator while trying to proofread the liner notes, but that’s more of post production issue. It was a really big alligator though.”

On a separate Spank Rock note, Devlin & Darko (DJs from Spank Rock) have released a remix of their FabricLive 33 mix titled FabricDead 33.3 revealing their design nerdery for vintage print presses. They even have a video of them having fun with a heat gun sealing the cds, check the site.

“The packaging was printed on a 1969 Vandercook Universal III proof press and have been individually numbered on a treadle powered Chandler & Price platen press, made in 1886. Limited to only a thousand copies, this one-time release was printed on 100% recycled (18 pt) 4-Panel chip board sleeves and contain real glass mastered CDs. Dimensions: 5.5″ x 4.9″. Printed, hand folded, glued, assembled and shrink wrapped in-house by Daniel Morris at The Arm Letterpress in Brooklyn, NY.