Alternate Universe Album Cover: Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Here's yet another album cover for Steve Lamacq's Grand ReDeisgn on BBC6. This time I try my hand at redesigning Massive Attack's Mezzanine.

The photo image is a greatly reworked version of a photo I took at Queen of Heaven Mausoleum (right) in Hillside Illinois a few years ago. When I loaded the pictures into a viewer this one turned up upside down and I ended up liking it better that way. More pictures from the Mausoleum are over here.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads

Once again, here's another album cover for Steve Lamacq's Grand ReDeisgn on BBC6. This time here's my take on Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads: For this one I started out with a picture of church I took on a trip through Southern Illinois a few years ago. I took several different pictures of the church, each one getting closer, but I liked this one for the big open sky to work with. I was happy with the finished product (above), but then I started fooling around with the photo distortion in CorelDraw and ended up with more sinister looking version below.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Django Django - Django Django

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Django Django's self titled debut.

Django Django - Django Django: I've liked word balloons on album covers ever since I first saw Mothers of Invention's Freak Out cover. The woman was originally on the right, but I flipped the image because for some reason in my head the dog just had to have the last word.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming.

Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming: This is actually a reworking of a Velvet Underground best-of mixdisc cover I made many years ago. The image is from a bondage pulp novel, which was perfect for use on a Velvets mix. But it also lends itself quite well to Adam Ant.

Cheap Trick + Blackhawks = potential t-shirt

Not that the world needed another Cheap Trick logo parody, but here it is. I listened to a bunch of Cheap Trick this afternoon and while watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat St Louis tonight I thought this might be a cool combo. This was only intended to be a mock-up to see how it would look and to decide if I wanted to do it for real, but I was happy with how it turned out already. Looks wise it would have worked better with Blackhawks as two words, but I think the point still works.

Now I need to find a print-to-order t-shirt place because I want this on a shirt.

surf-a-gogo: Lennon's Poster

Lennon's Poster: This short film by Nick Esdaile & Joe Fellows appeals to both the Beatles nerd and graphic design geek in me. The film follows the recreation from scratch of the Pablo Fanque circus poster that inspired John Lennon to write "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". With meticulous attention to detail they were able to rebuild the poster using traditional wood engraving and letterpress printing techniques.

surf-a-gogo: artfully defaced album covers

Jive Time Records in Seattle runs a few fantastic graphically oriented music sites, but my favorite is Deface Value - a collection of decaded album covers. Most of my faves are the deliberately manipulated covers, but I'm also quite intrigued by at few of the "found" covers. There's loads to like - here are few of my faves.

This Zappa collage by dinagadia is simple, but works so damn well it could have passed as the actual cover.

Another simple alternation, this collage by Jules Gayton makes me laugh everytime I see it.

As long as I've been shopping in used record stores I've had a fascination with records people wrote on. I've always treated records as a bit too sacred to write on, so I'm a bit envious of people liberated enough to deface their album covers. This found copy of Help! just amazes me.

Out of everything on the site, the cover that intrigues me the most is this altered copy of Steve Martin's A Wild and Crazy Guy (“Grabbit” by Harmony Korine). Maybe there's a sentimental attachment since it was one of the first albums I ever bought, but in this form it's such a haunting image.

There doesn't seem to be much turnover on the site lately, but that doesn't really bother me since I seem to go through all of the covers again every time I visit the site.