The Bad Sleeves. No.1: Kasabian - Velociraptor

In the first of the series of what will obviously run into the thousands, I've decided to tackle the cover for the new Kasabian album, Velociraptor, a cover so woeful that upon seeing it, this (soon to be) long running feature was born.

Kasabian have a sordid history of terrible covers, and themselves are a terrible cover of every single rock and roll cliché ever written, in every copy of Mojo they've ever skim read. I've always believed that if you want to make a credible sequel to Spinal Tap, you could not go far wrong than to follow these bozos around for a year.

The reason I hate this cover, is because I know exactly how it happened. I've been there when you've got an 'alright' illustration, but it's a strange shape, somethings you can't make it sit interestingly on the page, so you try juggling it around and then duplicating it until you end up with something like this. You briefly have a moment of thinking it's good, then you get a cup of tea, sit back down and delete it. This last part tragically never happened, and somehow it's been (probably) been pressed to 20,000 gatefold pieces of vinyl, that the band insisted on releasing (probably) at the budgetary detriment of the jobs of two juniors at the record label.

There's two things that I thoroughly dislike about this, the first is that all the heads are the same, I think if they'd all been different illustrations, I'd have just thought it was terrible and forgotten about it. The worst thing about it is, the negative space that the heads create, it's a shape that's nearly a swastika (that could have been so Bowie man!), but it's not, it's the most eye catching part of the design, and it's NOTHING but a hole for the typography to sit in (which is terrible by the way).

A great designer would have created the heads in a way that when put together created something relevant to album and the band, and made this work visually on a another level, this could have made this potentially a great cover.

It annoys me because this kind of work is nearly impossible to get these days, and these sleeves literally stay around FOREVER, and designers have to think about that all the time they're working on it. The work is so half-baked, so nearly a good idea, and so lazily executed that I'm as cross as I'm jealous that someone has so many opportunities they can afford to let even one slip away and not produce something beautiful.

Let me know if there are any covers you'd like me to review, or if you've got one you want to rip into for this blog.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07764 898 010

New Moons: Let it Go

This is the last single from the Moons album 'Life on Earth', it's called 'Let it Go'. 

The art was inspired by the opening line of the song "Collect your ammunition, shoot a bullet in my back" and is the last piece of work to feature Dr. Moonhead who has been on all the releases so far. This cover marks his death, we all felt he'd run his course and it was time to kill him off.

As far as the style goes it follows on from the previous artwork in it's application, but it's much more progressive in it's composition. Overall it's my favourite of all the covers, this is probably because I created each piece from scratch so it feels the freshest to me. 

Pointless fact for you; The snub nosed revolver used was traced from a photograph of the one used by Jack Ruby.

This marks the end of a great campaign, Acid Jazz have been a great label to work with and The Moons are really kicking up some interest, so everybody's happy.

Eat the Art

Two good things happened this week, the first, the Moons Vinyl arrived. It's actually the hardest thing in the world to get the final artwork out of the label once it's all finished, it always annoys me. I've been known to actually buy it to get my hands on it. But Acid Jazz are a different class and they've sent me 3 copies. Thank you to Archie for modelling it for me.

The second is the first placement of the 'Methods' artwork that's begun to creep into the media, this (above) was in this weeks NME.

Part 2: Methods my methods.

Following on from my previous post, here's some more information on how the Methods composition was built up, and some of the key layers involved. 

It's too complicated to show about each layer actually affected the final image as there are about 60 layers in total, so here's a look at some of the key ones with my thinking for blending them into the image.

Layer 1 (below), was the boat itself. It ended up being buried deep within the composition with not much but the actual shape of the vessel coming through.

Layer 2 was a tone and texture layer, and an old photo I took in Miami Harbour. This gave the image some contrast from bottom to top and put some variance in the sky.

Layer 3 is a grunge, burnt photo paper layer with a few holes punched in it to let different textures come through. This layer gave the image it's oil painted feel, adding a scratchy feel to all the colours.

Layer 4 is probably the most visible layer, these are inverted clouds that have been flipped upside down. I left these in quite strong to really muddy up the scene, creating a dense, foggy look to the storm.

Layer 5 is a beautiful piece of NASA photography that gave the sky it's twinkly texture and put a slight tint of reddy-brown into the hills on the horizon. You can see where I've put some white on the image to allow the ship to come through.

Layer 6 is the layer that really bought the whole piece to life. This layer of light-spots gave the sea some real movement and created a splash in the bottom left corner that is my favourite part of the whole image. I love that it's out of focus creating a nice sense of depth to the piece.

Read more about Methods and the thinking behind my creative here.

White Belt Yellow Tags album Methods is out 5th April and available here.

Part 1: Methods. Construction One Year.

Over a year ago Jamie Johnson approached me with with a project that he said was the 'best thing he'd ever worked on'. Of course I was interested, especially after we'd worked on Maps together, and after meeting Justin from White Belt Yellow Tag I was onboard.

This was a major campaign on a big label, and I wanted it to be the best, most integrated, intelligent piece of work I'd done. I wanted the single artwork to build into an explosion of album artwork, that continually developed a theme, revealing itself once you'd seen every piece of work.

Methods – Origins.

The band's brief was simple, they wanted 'Unknown Pleasures in white', difficult one right?

Here's the design notes that accompanied the above illustration that I sent back to the band in a attempt to drive them in a new direction;


LORENZO, BOSE and KEPLER.


As a starting point I was directed to ‘Unknown Pleasures’. Showing the death of a star, isolated on a black background, and resized to an underproportioned canvas, it gives omits a coldness and desperation found in the music. (To simply do ‘Unknow Pleasures’ in white, isn’t possible, the black gives it, it’s hostility, without that we’re in dangerous ‘Coldplay’ terrority.)


Having listened to WBYT I don’t get the same stark vibe, there’s a warmth and a soul to the music that underpins its depth.


So to reflect the brief I’ve gone back to what made Unknown Pleasures an iconic piece of work and applied similar principles to this artwork. 


My focus was on your title ‘Ode To Nothingness’. From here I researched the dissolution of atoms (see left). I found numerous graphs, charts, illustrations and theories all about what happens to atoms and particles when they disintegrate, From these I extracted the parts that interested me and evolved them into striking pieces of art.


Over the next few pages you’ll find different applications, that vear away from the original brief and skirt dangerously close to it.  These are rough sketches and rendered ideas, they can be a starting point for discussions or the final piece of work.


--


Once new thinking was agreed, I began work on the singles, these 3 covers formed the first steps of the campaign, mapping atomic paths based on scientific diagrams these were;

Tell Your Friends
Remains
Always and Echoes

They had a distinct style, and while being amongst the best work I'd ever produced, visually they were very familiar to me, using similar techniques to my Maps and Slipstream work. When it came time to start work on the album I wanted to develop something that tied all the singles together and had a radically different look and feel to anything I'd ever done before.

So from various shared start points; English art, the idea of atomic star maps and the sound of the Methods album I created a piece of work, based on the idea of 'being lost', a multi-textured illustration that conveyed the themes of the songs, carried the message of the single artwork and was the most original piece of artwork I'd ever created.

Many different layers were used to build-up the cover image, inverted clouds, light spots, ice textures, NASA photography and grunge textures were layered and blended for weeks until the finished result looked as it does. Lucky for me, when it came time to present this to the band, everyone loved it from Jinky to the label. Now the challenge for me was to show how this tied back into the singles...

Star-maps – The Missing Link


The story so far had shown a series of atomic paths, then, seemed to jump to a ship lost in a snowstorm. The challenge now was to use the album booklet to demonstrate how the two things related to one another, and the answer to this was to create navigational star-maps out of the atomic paths of the singles.

These maps were the answer to the question theoretically posed by the cover and they also solved the brief, giving me a linear story that ran through each piece of artwork.

Now everything made sense in my head, if the album was the ship lost in the snowstorm, then the singles were the stars guiding it home, ambitious? Sure, but everything had to fit together if this was going to be the best piece of campaign work I've ever done.

Finally, a safe port

The last piece of the puzzle was the back cover. I felt it was important resolve the whole story, so, the ship had to be safe. The back cover shows the ship in safer waters, guided by the stars.

The project so far has been very well received and art work has been developed for Underground advertising in London as well as adverts for all the major music publications, so hopefully you should all be seeing a live copy soon.

I've really enjoyed working on this release, the band, and their manager Jamie have been very open to ideas and it's been a real pleasure to develop them, plus, credit has to go to Gideon at Distiller Records, who has entrusted alot of the thinking to me, and let us all create something we're all very proud of.

White Belt Yellow Tags album Methods is out 5th April and available here

Free(ish) Album Covers (sometimes)...

I've hit a bit of a lull at the minute and I'm screaming out for some creative design to work on. I've never charged small bands and labels much more than my expenses to work on their projects, and I've always done it out of genuine love for artists and music.

So if you're in a band, or you know of anyone who needs work doing put them in touch, I'd be glad to help.

Drop me an email: ben@citizenstudios.co.uk