Designing For One: Part One

Since I’m a designer I have a hard time owning digital albums without having quality associated artwork. I love seeing iTunes filled with awesome artwork which then fills my screen when my screen saver comes on. OK, I’m a big ass nerd who likes to design stuff and uses any oppor­tunity to do so. I figured, hey I should post something and so here you go. Most of these are all quick 30 minute design exercises that I do not agonize over. I do however, find great pleasure in creating them. These are similar but again less agonized-over than the Bilal Love For Sale album covers. Posting these also reinforces the subliminal preference in utilizing specific fonts over others. Hey, it happens.

Saul Williams — NGH WHT

This is a digital-only download available here. It features Saul’s voice reading passages from his books, including the Dead Emcee Scrolls, accom­panied by the fantastic Arditti String Quartet. I was sad there was no artwork included with the download so I made some. The album includes three FLAC versions of the record — one with both Saul and the quartet (the album), one with just Saul (a capella) and one with simply the quartet (this is the remix, son). The idea is to inspire remixes and submit them on Saul’s main website — saulwilliams.com. The release is well worth the $6 price tag. Go cop that dunny.

Omnii — Omniishell

This is for (an old friend of mine) Colin Swenson’s musical persona Omnii (one of many projects) and his album that may or may not be released, but he was kind enough to share it with a few friends. I, for one, think it’s pretty awesome and wanted to make a quick cover for it. I also realized that though this and NGH WHT were made many months apart, I chose to utilize the same typeface. Which also led to the inspi­ration for MRI’s logo design typeface, a modded version of a font called Mod.

Aesop Rock — Appleseed EP

Ah the elusive and rare Aesop Rock EP (1999) that will never again be officially re-released. Man I still kick myself for not purchasing a copy when I had a chance. I recently re-downloaded this, FLAC-style and needed high resolution artwork to print out for my shelves, along with it’s digital companion. The photo used is from this amazing photo archive website called Shorpy. I felt it was a perfect fit and I adore the photo­graph. So really, this is minimal on the design, heavy on imagery — I did do a tray card too. Some day I’ll do one for “Music For Earth­worms” as well. If you haven’t checked out Shorpy and like nostalgia for the sake of living vicar­i­ously through dead people, go there — or if you simply like neat photographs.