60s Record Covers

Challenge
Create a set of three related pieces of pop culture media and re-imagine them in a new style and/or format. The three pieces of media must not be directly related (like a trilogy), but have some through line to unite them.

Strategy
I am very passionate about music, so choosing a set of albums was my immediate instinct. Album covers are already such a diverse playground for art and design, that it was difficult to find albums that I could justify redesigning. I looked back at prolific albums from the 60s, where album covers were more often the bare essentials, a photograph of the artist accompanied by text. I ultimately chose A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, and I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You by Aretha Franklin. I chose these albums not only because of their legendary status, but their emphasis on expressing emotion through music. I quickly decided to take the opposite approach of the original album covers. Rather than focus on the artist themselves, I wanted to express the sound and emotion through semi-abstract compositions.

Execution
I painted the inner sleeves by hand in smaller segments and digitally stitched them together into large patterns. With them, I wanted to more directly reference the original covers, while introducing simple symbology and abstraction. The outer sleeves serve as windows into the inner sleeve and the album itself. On the back, the necessary information is present but kept minimal to draw attention back to the other side, On the front, I chose sharp rising zigzags for Coltrane's chaotic jazz, soft stars for The Beach Boy's introspective pop,and falling drops for Franklin's heart-pouring soul. The tension between the inner pattern and outer windows begs for an audience to separate them and look deeper.