{"id":2048,"date":"2012-12-04T19:27:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T19:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trickartt.com\/notes\/?p=2048"},"modified":"2012-12-04T19:27:37","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T19:27:37","slug":"inside-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/2012\/12\/inside-the-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aside from having to say goodbye to my old Vespa<\/a>, one of the projects I worked on this Autumn was that of Enei’s debut album, Machines, on Critical Music. When I was given the heads-up, the first thing that struck me about the project was just what a great title Machines is!<\/p>\n

I immediately thought ‘I like machines!’ and began dreaming up all the ridiculous things I could draw for the artwork: Washing machines, sewing machines, vending machines, washing machines, fax machines, robots, washing machines, salami-slicing machines and so on. Did I mention I wanted to put a load of washing machines on his album cover?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The daydreams didn’t last long, and from the giddy highs of domestic machines, I fell to the low of realising that all of my typical inclinations would be way too kitsch for the album, and my usual tact of just-getting-on-with-it wasn’t getting me very far either. <\/p>\n

I got some basic typography together, and with a lot of customisation, I felt I was onto something good. That didn’t give me enough momentum though- the next two weeks were spent starting my computer every day, opening up this rather bare document, wondering what on earth I could put around it, getting distracted, and at the end of the day closing the same empty document without any progress being made.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eventually Captain of Critical, Kasra, must’ve been getting a bit fed up with my lack of action. He suggested working circuit boards into the artwork, which was an idea I liked the sound of. I got the pencils and paper out and got to work. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As much as I liked its lo-fi charm, it clearly wasn’t a finished album cover – it needed to look a lot more polished. To achieve this I had this silly idea of designing it as a proper PCB. I found some freeware on the internets and started experimenting, but I quickly realised I was way out of my depths (that and my original sketch was probably an electrical impossibility!). A couple of days later and back in the comfort zone of grids and Adobe Illustrator, I was nearly there:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the album cover was pretty much finished. I sent a few versions to the label, who ended up picking two versions – my hairline black version for the physical artwork, and the full-colour PCB style version for the digital edition. Ahh!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Having lived with both versions in their contexts since it was signed off, I have to say I much prefer the hairline version. I am a huge sucker for getting finished physical copies of my work though, so I’m sure my opinion is slanted!<\/p>\n

Speaking of finished copies though, it looks great, all none-more-black and shrinkwrapped too – I’m doing my best to avoid unwrapping my archive copies as it really ties the packages together. It’s also good to see my custom typography across the rest of the packaging – artwork beyond the cover is a luxury you’re not often afforded with digital downloads!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Machines<\/a> is out now on Critical Music, and if you buy the Vinyl doublepack, you get the full CD album in the sleeve gratis. I love it when they do that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aside from having to say goodbye to my old Vespa, one of the projects I worked on this Autumn was that of Enei’s debut album, Machines, on Critical Music. When I was given the heads-up, the first thing that struck me about the project was just what a great title Machines is! I immediately thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6,24],"tags":[61,284,285,102],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cover-art","category-design-process","category-work","tag-critical","tag-enei","tag-machines","tag-washing-machine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pC5Eo-x2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2077,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions\/2077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trickartt.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}