Joy Electric: My Grandfather, The Cubist
I think this would be the first “Christian” band we have featured here on Sleevage. But this isn’t the usual WWJD type band. If you’re a christian this is probably the funkiest Sunday church music you can find :)
(Note: My knowledge of Christian music is very limited. So if there is a funkier Christian band then please comment and I’ll investigate.
I was lucky enough to have Ryan send me not just the final art but the rejected covers too. He also made this feature easy by proving much of the text. From the horses mouth is better than my gramatical hindered text.
From Ryan Clark of Invisible Creature:
“My relationship as visual coordinator for the extraordinarily prolific Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric) began in 2003 with his 7th full-length studio album “The Tick Tock Treasury.” Ronnie and I saw very eye-to-eye regarding the visual interpretation of his music, and we’ve had a great working relationship ever since.
“My Grandfather, The Cubist” is the 6th Joy Electric album that I’ve designed, and my favorite to date. The work I’ve done for Ronnie has always been very graphic, very geometric illustrative design. With this record I wanted to explore a more organic approach, using pre-printed materials to build my image. Each block of color is a small clipping from a magazine, scanned in, scaled up (to expose the CMYK build), and cut into little shapes that I arranged into some sort of mathematical, celestial environment.”
“The type is meant to look like somewhat of a registration mishap, and it kind of plays tricks with your eyes as well, which I liked.”
“These were my very first ideas for the cover, which were pretty uninspired. Ronnie declined them, and I’m glad. Despite the fact that I was fairly pleased with the type, they look like generic techno covers.”
It’s interesting to see how different the final cover is to these initial ones. Not only in style but also in the amount of work that would have been involved to produce it.
“Here’s a photo from a shoot that Ronnie did for the album after we had completed the cover. Photographer Zach Hodges did a pretty great job of nailing the overall look of the artwork with some hand-made props.”
Here’s a recap of the previous covers done by Invisible Creature for Joy Electric. All of which don’t fit your typical “electronic” music album cover sterotype.
The type really does attract the eye as you seek to find focus. I like the texture of the piece as it really makes it look like a piece of art rather than a digital file.
You can sample the album on Joy Electric’s Myspace page.
You might also want to check out this article which gives some insight in the brothers at Invisible Creature. They walk the walk and rock the walk it seems. It’s good to see designers who don’t sport the black turtle necks and thick rimmed glasses style.
