Oh yeah, I design record covers

I realised recently that a lot of my favourite record covers from the past couple of years (since I last put anything on my blog here at least!) have all been very typographic. And very jumbled in their own ways too.

Four record covers for Anaïs featuring hand-drawn lettering and bright colours in unconventional layouts

I’ve had a lot of fun doing these singles for Anaïs over the past few months. It’s good to break the rules sometimes and I think I’ve broken all of the ones I hold dear with these – nothing lines up, the cases are all mixed, the colours all clash, and the letterforms are all wildly inconsistent. But it does it for me!

Record cover for the reissue of 'Beautiful Lies' by B-Complex, featuring hand-painted and hand-cut collaged typography

One of Hospital’s landmark tracks, B-Complex’s Beautiful Lies, got the re-release and remix treatment. We all really liked the artwork I made for 2010’s VIP remix, but the label thought it would be nice to do this artwork in the colours of the trans pride flag for Matia on this more modern reissue. I loved the brief, but was quickly reminded how weird the letterforms of the title all fitted together in a square. Once again, my text got all wobbly and I ended up making it work with this unconventional arrangement.

Two record covers for Degs featuring typograhy in the font Futura Bold, where the letters have been unconventionally condensed

This pair of covers were kind of the logical conclusion of the artwork I have been making for Degs since his debut release in 2018. I love me some Futura Bold at the best of times, and with these covers I was trying to condense the letters into as tight an arrangement as possible in the square shape of a record cover, without them completely losing legibility.

Record cover for 'bailejungle' by Urbandawn, featuring a collage of different typefaces and styles

A slightly more conventional typographic collage is this single for Urbandawn. I was instructed that the title had to specifically be all lower-case, which made the collage a bit more challenging, but I like how it turned out!

Record cover for a single by four artists - Doktor, P Money, D Double E, and Diagnostix, featuring different typefaces and a colour palette taken from Doktor's previous singles

This cover was a difficult one to make work – I had a lot of names that were collaborating on this release, somehow managed to lock this up into a tight square, and even got a few typograhic easter eggs in there too.

Puppies: Better than social media

A graph showing the change in my attention from social media to my dog over the course of time

Two things have happened in my life over the past eighteen months-or-so that I didn’t think were related, but I think have proven to be. The first is that I got a dog, and the second is that I have dramatically reduced my use of social media. And I think the net benefit is that I’ve been happier for it.

I was never particularly big on social media, and my drivers for leaving it behind were I think more down to decisions being made by the platforms themselves. Nobody needs another blog post nobody will read about the downfall of Twitter or how much Meta absuses Instagram notifications, but what I will say is that one of my favourite technological discoveries of the past year is that you can post to Instagram straight from the iPhone’s Photos app, without ever having to open the Instagram app itself. It’s been a joy – I’m still showing the world that wants to see that I’m still thinking creatively every single day, but I don’t have to get sucked in to whatever its algorithm wants to show me when I post my daily drawings.

Meanwhile, I’ve decided that having a puppy is a bit like a victorian TV set. It has been surprisingly hard work training a puppy, but boy is it entertaining. Our border terrier is a very funny dog and she provides so much amusement it’s become clear to me that dogs were probably a very good way of keeping people amused in an era before mass media. And boy does she get fed up with me when I pick up my phone!

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that I would recommend a puppy as a good distraction for breaking the social media habit.

 
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