Sunday, December 20, 2009

About the album art for "You Are The Magic People"

There has been some confusion about the album art, and for good reason. When I decided to release this album, I wanted to make a clear difference between the physical LP release and the less tangible MP3 release. I enlisted two of my friends, both fine artists from different schools, to create two unrelated images. One would be printed on the jacket and inserts of the LP, and the other would not be printed at all, only visible on people's iPods. It's my obnoxious way of reminding the listener that the two formats are not the same, and that neither is a replacement for the other.


This is the LP jacket, illustrated by Raul Gonzalez. When discussing the design with him, I knew our budget would be limited to a single color print on a large two-sided fold-over sheet. Knowing his background in sequential art, I asked him to include the namesake poem (Written by RC Weslowsky, found on the google, and used by permission) in its entirety as word balloons. He ingeniously had the text spoken by various mutations of popular comic characters, including the nefarious Yassy Goldie.

Here is the official mp3 album art. It was designed by Ben Sisto. He's a Brooklyn-based artist and promoter, though he may not differentiate the two acts. I've always admired Ben for his optimistic futurism, and when I came up with the two-format idea I immediately thought of him for the digital side. The design was created in Adobe Illustrator and as far as I know has never been printed out. The image is included in the metadata within the mp3s as they are freely provided at Inman Street Records.

I hope this clears up some questions. Be sure that you're listening to the right format before you enjoy You Are The Magic People on Oklo Audio!

1 comment:

Oklo Audio said...

I don't know why blogger insists on cropping these images instead of shrinking them. It is a peculiar thing.