But I always have exceptions to my nonsensical opinions — and for me the psychedelic exception is Australia’s Tame Impala.

You can’t go anywhere without hearing a track off 2012’s Lonerism these days (they’ll be touring the U.S. in November), but I’m going to focus on their debut full-length. From opener “It Is Not Meant to Be,” Innerspeaker has just the right balance of textures and guitar hooks to keep me engaged. And frankly, it’s just a much more compelling album cover.

Leif Podhajsky designed much of Tame Impala’s catalog and materials, sticking with a consistent typeface throughout. Podhajsky utilizes a Droste effect on Innerspeaker to give you an enticing visual of an organic, multidimensional stereo field before anything ever hits your ears.

Tame Impala’s typeface is Eurostile Bold Extended or essentially Microgramma, the uppercase-only predecessor to Eurostile. Both designed by Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti, the two Italians birthed Microgramma in 1952 (in an effort to improve Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic) and developed the more complete Eurostile about ten years later. (See also: Eurostile Next.)

Fine lines indeed.

Much like Tame Impala’s “Elephant” on your local airwaves, Eurostile and Microgramma are ubiquitous in science fiction. From Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Casio logo, they became the default lettering for technology and space exploration in the ’60s and ’70s. (Note that Bank Gothic also has sci-fi appeal, having been used in the TV series Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1 and many more.)

Despite its potential overuse (see Radiohead’s OK Computer and The Bends), the font seems very appropriate on Innerspeaker. It simultaneously evokes a retro past and an unforeseen future — just like the music itself.

From his tenure in Archers of Loaf to Barry Black to Crooked Fingers, Bachmann has influenced my own songwriting and guitar-playing significantly more than most. (And he recently has been spotted on stage with Neko Case, another fave of mine.)

But as with many of our beloved artists, life occasionally gets in the way. We don’t bother to make new playlists, we lose track of tour stops in our hometown, and we miss out on that critical release of note. Such is the case for me with 2011’s Breaks in the Armor from Crooked Fingers.

Like much of Bachmann’s recent work, the album is full of songs about perfect storms, drunkards, spilled blood and lovers lost. The dark lyrics almost recall a modern twist on Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in tone. Musically, the songs wonderfully straddle the line between hope and despair — “The Counterfeiter” and “Went to the City” being the more upbeat exceptions. For the past month, the album version of this gem has been on repeat:

The record cover is simple and straightforward: a vibrating illustration by Greg Betza of a performing Bachmann with touches of watercolor. The typeface, Ephesus Light by Ahmet Altun, is well-paired with the thin lines of the drawing. The font is named after the ancient city near Izmir in Turkey, which is famous for the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World).

Very fitting for an album that summons ancient mariners and lost souls.

The cover was designed by Shaun Durkan, a graphic designer by training as well as the bassist and vocalist for the band Weekend. We had the pleasure of asking Shaun a few questions about his work on the Tamaryn cover, his font choice and collaborating with the artist.

What font did you use on the cover? Any particular reason you used that font beyond the visceral, “I like the way this looks with that?”

SD: I knew I definitely wanted to use a geometric sans-serif for everything on the record. It was obviously important for the type to match the clean, and classic feel of the imagery. I also needed something with a bit of weight to it in order for the masking effect of the flowers behind the type to really show. Not to mention we did a layer of UV coating on the type and some of the type gets quite small on the back (5pt if I remember correctly).

Personally, Avenir had all the positives of Futura without any of the emotional associations. It felt a bit virginal, which may be naive but in the end it was really a gut decision.

Oh yeah, Avenir is really nice. I read somewhere that Adrian Frutiger, the typographer, was inspired by Futura when he created Avenir. Definitely a solid choice.

You mentioned the flowers. It’s a really bold image. How did that come about? Is it a photograph?

SD: Tamaryn’s lyrics are really centered around natural imagery. Flowers, the ocean, the sky…etc so it made sense to start working with something that complimented the words and also suggested romance and life and death. All the major themes.

The image on the cover and all the digital singles/postcards are variations on flowers and watercolors on a scanner with the lid up in a pitch black room. It was the only way I could manipulate the colors and flowers and preserve that vacuous sense of space. Their sound is so intrinsically about both physical and internal space, the goal was to find a way to illustrate that world.

These images are really nice. I love that you made images for all the digital singles. How much of this project was a collaboration between yourself and the artist? It seems that you were given a pretty wide space to play in.

SD: Thank you. There was a much more extensive back and forth between Tamaryn and I than any project I’ve worked on before. Most of that was because we were friends before we started the project, so we felt comfortable giving each other honest critique and being pretty blunt about what was working and what wasn’t. Tamaryn had a very specific idea of what she wanted the art to look like before I started working, which involved using some photos already taken by a friend. But I knew there was potential for the project to become so much more that I had to keep pushing and pushing to make original work – solely for the record. It was frustrating and stressful at times as she’s very opinionated and I can be pretty hardheaded about my work, but I think we’re both pretty proud of what came of it all.

Yeah, I think that makes for a great project, especially if you have the kind of friendship that can handle that kind of intensity.

How long have you been doing design?

SD: I start designing when I was in middle school I guess. I was in a band and did all the flyers/logo/website stuff. We even had shirts and played mainly teen centers in California. I believe I was working mainly in MSpaint and a very primitive version of Photoshop. Then I attended San Francisco Art Institute for a year studying photo and ultimately transferred to CCA where I majored in Graphic Design.

I feel like being in a band or being into music got most of us into design. It seems like a common theme. Do you have any major influences/heroes when it comes to the design you do?

SD: Influences: Martin Venezky, 23 Envelope, Brian Roettinger, Experimental Jetset, Hort. Generally…a bit of controlled chaos.

Nice. What’s next for you? More music packaging projects?

SD: What’s next for me…I’m about to start on a couple really exciting projects. The artwork for both the new Wax Idols record (via Slumberland Records) and the new No Joy record (Mexican Summer). Both bands are great friends of mine and their new records are pretty damn amazing. Also in the distant future is art for Azar Swan, the new project of members of Religious to Damn.

I suppose I’ll have to start working on the new Weekend LP art also so I’ve got quite a full plate in the next 4 months or so.

The Robert Mapplethorpe portrait of musician/journalist Cath Carroll on the cover, the rich history of lead singer Mark Robinson’s Teen-Beat label, Duran Duran’s Simon LeBon as producer, the fast and catchy pop perfection of songs such as “Make Out Club,” the mention of “no guitar effects or synthesizers used on this recording” — there’s so much to take in and digest. However, we’re just going to ignore all of that and focus on the very fitting Pump Triline typeface by British designer and typographer Philip Kelly, who is still independently producing typefaces today.

Philip worked at Letraset for 25 years, spending much of that time in their type design studio under the direction of Colin Brignall. For you youngsters out there, Letraset was well-known for producing sheets of dry transferrable lettering (more commonly called “rub-ons” or “rub-downs”) before the advent of word processing and desktop publishing. During his tenure at Letraset, Philip designed typefaces such as Cortez, Croissant, Pump Triline, Gillies Gothic Extra Bold Shaded, Emporium, Impress, and Spritzer, as well as creating weight variations of many others.

We were thrilled to chat with him recently about rock’n’roll and his work:

The Chronapress, Rubylith, IKARUS and modern software — you’ve seen the evolution of the craft of type design like few others. Some are at times nostalgic for the days when design was more “hands-on,” while others forget just how powerful modern digital software can be. What is your perspective on how tools impact the craft? Or said another way, what is/was your favorite tool of type creation?

When we first had the Ikarus software at Letraset, most of us there felt very frustrated by a number of things about it:

(a) User unfriendly, no mouse of course with everything input alpha-numerically. Even just a wrongly typed period would crash the program. Our own software expert was able to tweak the original program (written in Fortran by the Hamburg company URW), and with other updates, the user experience became bearable. However, most designers there missed the immediate way that we could trim or patch the Rubylith film letters that we used to cut by hand.

(b) The screen display, whilst huge, was only wire frame. Anyone involved in type design will know how important it is to see the letters in a solid form to assess their shapes, weights and balance etc.

(c) Output was by a slow Aristomat drafting machine. Then all we had were outlines onto tracing paper or the letters could be cut in Rubylith and peeled out as solids or in negative (for later contacting to photographic prints).

Later when I left Letraset, I was introduced to Fontographer and FontLab, the latter is what I now use all the time now. Here at last I could view the letters in solid form and do so much more with the outlines. Ikarus later became available as IkarusM for the Macintosh platform and was another application that I used. It was a great improvement on the old version that had to run on a huge mainframe computer.

What typeface are you most proud of designing?

All of them really. However, my Sendai typeface family holds a special place in my heart. It took a lot of time and hard work. It is only available from me directly.

Rumor has it that you amassed quite a vinyl record collection and shot many on-stage photos of bands while working at Letraset. Did rock culture in the 70s and 80s influence your work? What was it like to see your typefaces used in advertising and in the music business?

Yes, the rock music of the time did have a direct influence on me. The album sleeve designs were becoming so amazing and adventurous compared to say the 50s and early 60s that had standard fonts and just a picture of the artists on them in most cases. It was great fun to see my designs being used. I recall that Croissant and Cortez were pretty popular.

What is your favorite album cover of all time?

Probably one that does not include any of my typefaces in fact. It is called Fandangos In Space. Released in the UK in 1973, by the incredible flamenco-rock band called Carmen. It was a gate fold sleeve with wonderful pictures of the band members and what I think was hand lettering for their Carmen logotype. I later embroidered the back of a denim shirt with this lettering and a flamenco dancer.

Who or what do you consider to be your greatest influence?

Probably the Letraset Type Studio’s director Colin Brignall. Colin had a fantastic sense for new ideas, and a keen eye to spot our production errors! Also, the guy that first taught me to hand cut Rubylith film; Bob Newman.

Any upcoming projects or releases that you can share?

Yes, I have just released a new display typeface named Fantail. It has a connection with the fabulous Roy Orbison. The story is in the pdf available at my web site. Also I recently began a new version of my Letraset typeface “Spritzer.” This will be a more contemporary and quite different version, which it has to be, as I do not own any rights to any of the stuff created for Letraset. Outside designers were credited and paid royalties I believe. Staff designers had no credit on the Letraset sheets although we were sometimes named in publicity brochures and posters.

A big thanks to Philip for sharing all of these wonderful details. Also, one should note that Teen-Beat has recently re-released a special 7″ vinyl box set of Perfect Teeth, printed this time around with metallic gold ink.

My first question is the obvious one: what font did you use on the cover?

It’s Gotham Narrow (book weight). Gotham got so abused over the past four or so years but I really love the Narrow family. It’s really strong, yet graceful.

I agree, they did a really good job with it. Can you tell me about the inspiration surrounding the shot choice for the cover?

Before the album was titled “Diver,” Callan (the singer) told me that he really wanted to do something with a woman in a pool at night. Water is a central theme on the record both musically and lyrically so it seemed simple enough. We tried many different photographers in LA, they all did nice work but nothing really worked with what we were going for. We had the record label breathing down our necks and I knew we couldn’t re-shoot it because I wanted to be present to art direct, but I live in New York and it was late February. So, I turned to my friend Josh McNey, who is a very talented photographer with an extensive back catalog.

I was lucky enough to come across an older photo he had taken at an apartment complex in Los Angeles, and it really struck me. I liked that the photo was restrained and somehow complimented the emotional honesty of the record in a very tense way. It was perfect, it’s a very simple image but there is a lot of drama and tension there. It’s not a very clean pool, it has all of these marks at the bottom, and is full of this beautiful debris. The shadow of a balcony adds a slightly ominous feeling, which hints at the record’s darker moments.

So I spent a long time color correcting so that the blue on the cover, inner sleeve and the back cover, match each other.

You shot the images throughout the booklet and back cover. Any particular influences on your photography?

I don’t consider myself a photographer, I take photos and usually keep them to myself or use them as source material for different projects.

In this case my photography primarily functioned as texture. I made the back cover horizon image from reflecting and repeating a small portion of a photo that I took of Lake Como to create a pattern. I wanted to create an artificially pristine surface to contrast the flawed beauty of the scene on the cover.

Do you have a typical approach to designing album covers or is it different every time? Does it differ from your other client work?

I like to work really closely with the artists. I like to hear every detail and every idea that went into making the record, down to the recording and production process. In this case, the guys in Lemonade and I are old friends, and we’ve worked together before on all their other major releases so It was easy for us to understand where each other was coming from.

I usually, almost obsessively listen to the album over and over again many times a day. I kind of immerse myself in it, then I kind of go all over the place with my own ideas. My goal is always to make the album look like it sounds. For me, the most impactful record covers aren’t concerned with the same principals that traditional, commercial, or even editorial, graphic design is.

It took me a really long time to figure out that when I design a record cover it has to have this golden ratio of what the record sounds like and what the band took with them into the writing and recording process. I guess my approach isn’t as conceptual as it is emotional. That might sound over the top (it’s not like I’m wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask, crying at my computer with candles all around me) – but if I didn’t feel around in the dark with the album then I’d just be laying something on top of someone else’s work. I’d be patting myself on the back as a designer and it wouldn’t really be complementing the music and making it a cohesive piece – I can’t say I’ve achieved that, but that’s what I try to work towards… so I spend a lot of time listening to a record – which is why I don’t design covers for records I don’t like.

I definitely get that. It feels like you really have to spend time with the music to get at the perfect feel. What are your “workhorse” fonts? Which ones do you keep returning to?

Oddly enough, I always find myself coming back to Mr. Eaves for body. It’s just so pleasant to look at.

What’s next for you? More album covers?

Right now I’m working on a pretty wide range of identity projects at the moment. I also just finished up some hand-screened Tee shirts for my monthly party in Brooklyn, TURRBOTAX®. As for album covers, I don’t have anything lined up right now, but I’m always up for doing more!

But perhaps the above tidbit should be none of your business. Or at the very least, just too much information.

Personal details aside, the 1992 release of In Ribbons marked an era where effects pedals and processors such as the Yamaha FX500 reigned supreme with many British bands. I remember seeing the new-at-the-time processor onstage with Slowdive, The Boo Radleys, Lush and many more — with most content to use the machine’s presets instead of shaping custom effects. (In all fairness, it was a pain in the ass to save them.) Keeping in mind its impact and influence within the shoegazer genre, it should almost be considered its own musical instrument.

But Pale Saints was the kind of “shoegazer” band that didn’t rely on hastily-crafted effects. They simply brought great textures and sounds to some really great, well-written songs.

(The More You Know: US editions of In Ribbons included a cover of Slapp Happy’s “Blue Flower.” UK editions of the vinyl album included a free 7″ with two songs recreated by the Tintwistle Brass Band. Their version of “A Thousand Stars Burst Open” is particularly nice.)

Many will immediately recognize this album art as the work of Vaughan Oliver (in this case, as with many other v23 records, in collaboration with Chris Bigg). And while not the first time that we’ve discussed Vaughan Oliver’s work, I believe this is the first time we have featured the back of a record.

The prolific and talented Kevin Westenberg is credited with the still life photography on the front cover, but the back cover of this record really steals the show. The carefully layered and manipulated variants of Futura perfectly mirror the tracks and textures within.

And that is typographic design functioning at its very best.

Sleeve Design – Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg
Model-making – Pirate
Portrait Photography – Matt Heslop
Still Life Photography – Kevin Westenberg

Editor’s Note: We were thrilled when writer, photographer and all-around badass Linda Park accepted our invite to be a guest contributor. She’s worked in the music industry for longer than she’ll allow us to mention, tour managing famous bands and working on events such as SXSW. But mostly, she “tells it like it is” like no one else. Catch more of her talents and grains of wisdom at Afraid of the Park and Into the Great Wide Open.

When Shawn asked me to do a post for Rock That Font, well of course I was excited because anyone asking me to write anything is pretty groovy and sure, I like music and design. I am not, however, a super smart font nerd so it became ponderous, what record to discuss.

Fast forward two (err, three?) months and now that I sit just outside his office every day the pressure’s been mounting, if only in my mind, to talk to you about the wonders of…

The Head on the Door.

A seminal, beautiful, meaningful, magical record.

They say you never forget your first time, and it’s that way for me with music. I remember with fondness and wist the day I stopped being a Cure virgin. I saw the video for “In-Between Days” and wondered who are these adorable creatures running around amongst a flurry of animated socks?!

The Cure – In-Between Days by jpdc11

And into the rabbit hole I fell. I didn’t want to be with Robert Smith, I wanted to be Robert Smith. At 15 my aesthetic turned and the hair got bigger and the clothes got blacker. I was a goner.

Many of the band’s designs were done by guitarist Porl Thompson and his partner, Andy Vella. Together they became Parched Art and were responsible for not only the covers, but their distinctive hand drawn lettering became a staple in the band’s artistic oeuvre.

Artistic oeuvre. Sigh.

What it boils down to is this… we can look at the artfully mussed with photo of Robert Smith’s sister, Janet (who was married to Thompson), and at the scratching looping swirls that become the words “the head on the door,” and I understand how design plays a big part in how we become enchanted with any album, especially back in the vinyl era, which is experiencing a renaissance now, but at the end of the day we pull out the record, put it on the turntable and it’s the music that takes us away.

Away to a heartspace that expands and stretches with the words that speak to us and the melodies that let these lyrics ride their waves into our souls. I am probably the only person who would say “Push” is her favorite track on the record when you have songs like “A Night Like This” and “Close to Me,” but the thrumming wash of guitars and Smith’s voice telling us “he gets inside to stare at her, the seeping mouth, the mouth that knows the secret you”… it’s a verse that takes me away and no matter how old I am when I hear it, I’m really 15 again learning about yearning through the smiling melancholy.

The sleeve reflects Jacaszek’s moody atmospherics perfectly. Executed by Michael Cina—founder of the design studio, Cina Associates—the cover features a broken, fragile gold leaf ellipse set against a dark background. Both earthy and sophisticated, the contrast matches the simple elegance of the music. Recently, Rock That Font caught up with Michael Cina to discuss the cover design, naive craftsmanship and the value of not knowing your limits.

You’re a bit of a renaissance man—you’re an artist, a designer and a typographer—how does that play out when you’re designing for an album cover, where do you start first: with the art or the typography?

Recently I have been thinking about this topic. I feel that design is an exploration of semiotics, the visual language of what all images say (typography included). That is my main guidepost for producing an album cover. I am trying to use album covers as a mode of communication.

A lot of times I start with visual ideas and more often than not, I leave type towards the later part of the process. I can do anywhere from 10 to 100 visual ideas, so by that time, the image becomes a little more elevated in its importance.

The typographic aspect of the project is usually me getting myself out of a corner that I put myself in by not thinking about more about the typographic aspect. I use type sparingly on a lot of covers, but I am always aware of what it is saying.

Recently I started on a cover using typography as the main element. After two hours of working on it I ended up doing a cover with no type on it at all!

So when you started working on the Jacaszek project, were you already thinking about the visual statement as a whole or were you just trying to pick up on some kind of visual imagery that would relate to his brand of postmodern orchestral music?

I am trying to hit a lot of different thoughts and ideas all at once and it is difficult to capture that. The music was finished and I got a copy that I had listened to a couple of times, shortly after that I got the brief on what Michal was thinking when he made the music. The album name was Glimmer and that was the main approach to follow. Four other guides to go by were “golden fabric, glimmering light on the golden surface, wind, and disappearing horizon.” He also wanted something flat with no dimension, he was very specific about this. Some of the descriptions negate themselves so I started thinking about what I would do for a week or so.

My original idea (shown on inner sleeves) was to take some earth and bind it to a canvas so it would have low contrast. I painted everything black and then bound gold leaf to it. The texture of the earth broke the delicate surface of the gold leaf. The final results were photographed over a period of time to get the different light of the day captured against the surface. In the end, I thought it was good, but something was missing. A month passed and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

One day I was working on some art and I painted black over two paintings that I had been working on, let them dry, then bound gold leaf to the surface. I never really thought about it before I started, it just felt like what I should do. The final results are what you see on the cover and labels. I think it fits his descriptions quite well accounting for all the considerations there are making an album cover.

I showed the ideas to some of my friends and a couple of responses were “looks like human skin” and “an Arvo Part record” and I thought that was the perfect cross section. When Michal saw these he was very happy with the results as well.

It definitely gives the viewer a perfect visual analogy for the music—beautifully fragile with darkness at the edges. I feel like the best album packaging design does that, it supports the content. I feel like even the typography kind of pushes the viewer toward the music—delicate and subtle. What led you to choosing the sans serif for the cover?

Yeah, the music is very ambitious and serious. I think delicate and subtle applies very well. I feel that is what makes good typography, it adds to what is being said through the design and text. I try not to “over design” or clutter the work with meaningless noise. If you are really saying something, you have to figure out how to say it. I prefer the straight-no-chaser route.

I used Founders Grotesque on this cover. It is a typeface that Sam Valenti and I chose at the beginning of 2011. We felt it was unique enough to embody what we were seeing for the year. What I like is that Founders has a real light weight and odd proportions. The uppercase C is a little too illegible for my tastes but besides that, I love it. It still captures a bit of that naive craftsmanship that I am lead to.

Founders fit perfect into the Jacaszek cover, probably my best use of it to date. I tried some different and bolder approaches but they didn’t really work out too well. I worked on around 50 other type layouts before coming to this. It really matches how I picture the music sounding.

You said that you’re lead to “naive craftmanship” in typography, which I think is great. You’re a serious typographer but you seem really serious about the art and the design too. Do you have one aspect of what you do that you’re more drawn to or do all three kind of support each other?

I think to make wonderful things, you have to be naive to a certain aspect. I think the reality of any project can be overwhelming at times. The dreamers, the people who don’t know their limits, are often the ones who succeed. To get into typography, there is a LARGE learning gap and it is like that with a lot of things.

In the end, all three support each other to me. I have modeled my career around this model, it is not for most people. To me, it is somewhat seamless at times and other times the furthest from that. Right now I am working on a rebrand for a cable company, a rebrand for a sports cable network, and some font work for a sports network. On the side I am doing a little painting, designing everything for a documentary (title through poster), three cd covers, flying to NYC to do a large painting, rebranding/website for a travel company, working on a couple of start ups, just handed off an article for Creative review, and finishing up a font. I also have a blog, thenewgraphic.com that I update pretty regularly. So yeah, it is a juggling act. Of course not all these things are at once but they are all active. I want more work right now too.

So what’s next for you? What dreams are on the distant horizon that you’re reaching for?

My main goal is to do bigger and better work, all around. Really push/stretch myself further in new ways. To do that I need some regular clients that want to do great work together. This would seem like an easy task, but it is not. A lot of designers go under the notion that if they had a client like Ghostly (or whomever) they could do great work, but that is not true. You can do great (or horrible) work for anyone. It just takes trust, faith (in both parties), and a drive to push beyond the mundane.

Both corporations and clients seem to be scared or they have a lack of trust of designers, but it is the companies that take that leap of faith are the ones that reap the rewards. Ghostly could want to do mindless and trendy covers but they invested in art and design. Older brands like Braun, Olivetti, Container Corporation, Geigy, etc took that leap of faith by trusting design to work for them and it did. You see this today with Apple, Nike, and a couple of others, but it is not quite the same.

I am trying to find someone to represent me and my work. That has been a big dream of mine. I would like to be admitted into the AGI. It would be great to speak at the college I dropped out of. I would like to have a solo show at a large gallery next year. My main goal is to get another larger client though. Any takers?

Fittingly, the album art manages to be both epic and minimal. Featuring the art work of Gregory Euclide, the cover is devoid of any other extraneous information. Throughout the packaging, designer and art director of Dead Oceans / JagJaguwar / Secretly Canadian, Daniel Murphy, keeps the layout simple and unadorned, balancing the intricacy of the artwork with the simplicity of a solid, unbroken scarlet red. As for traditional fonts, there are none. Murphy uses his own hand-writing for the whole project, giving the packaging a warm, organic feel.

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to Daniel about the album artwork. Daniel Murphy is a serious artist and a serious thinker and the interview quickly moved far beyond discussing fonts and layouts straight into the ephemeral nature of music, album art in the digital age and the future of music packaging.

Was there any specific reason that you chose to hand-write all the titling, lyric and liner notes for Bon Iver, Bon Iver? Is that your normal handwriting?

As soon as I started talking about the direction we’d take for the art and layout of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, Justin had already decided that he wanted the two Gregory Euclide pieces to be the focal points of the packaging. Euclide’s work is incredibly intricate and organic, so we wanted to make sure that the rest of the layout maintained that handmade, organic feel, and didn’t compete with the images. We made a few attempts at putting together some sort of more formal typography, but it was quickly apparent that the layout needed to feel as simple and personal as possible – tying in to both the images and the general tone and mood of the record.

One of the most amazing things about the Bon Iver albums is how, though Justin’s lyrics can be incredibly impressionistic and really specific to his own experiences, listeners seem to find this rare level of personal, emotional resonance to the songs. They’re evocative in a universal way. I wanted the rest of the layout to communicate that same level of intimacy and personality, and with that in mind, writing it all out by hand was the only way to go. With the black text on a white field, and a few accents of bold red pulled from the center left area of the cover, the layout feels exceedingly simple, but still complete, and doesn’t distract from the depth and beauty of the cover image.

I tried emulating a few styles of handwriting from other sources, but the only thing that didn’t ultimately feel stilted and too considered was my own everyday handwriting. I practiced writing the titles over and over, stretching them out and simplifying them until they felt like signatures. That set the style for the rest of the layout. My own sloppy lazy-dude handwriting, stretched and simplified a little, ended up being a good foil for the lyrics. Making the somewhat obtuse words slightly illegible gives the listener a little more to decode and unravel, which is an aspect of record packaging I’ve always loved as a fan, and something I try to incorporate whenever possible in my work.

I like that idea of giving the listener something to decode and unravel. I felt like there was a kind of heyday of that kind of thing in the late 80’s / early 90’s. Do you have any examples of packaging that you loved as a fan first and then later became a conscious (or unconscious) inspiration?

Peter Saville’s work for Factory and Vaughn Oliver’s for 4AD were both huge influences on me as a teenage music fan and later as a designer, but the example that seems most appropriate here would be the packaging from The Fall’s albums throughout the 80s. As a fan I loved the idea of how they took the unhinged, goofy-but-menacing tone of their music and somehow found a way to enhance that with willfully obtuse artwork. The packaging is just packed with what seems like graphic non-sequitors – nonsensical handwriting and type, dense collages, photos and paintings that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with each other or the music, and seem very deliberately intended to be visually unappealing or at least overstimulating. On some of those records it’s nearly impossible to figure out the names of the songs. But that confusion IS their style, both musically and visually. The handwriting (probably Mark E. Smith’s) and collage feel of the art do much to contextualize the music and add another level to the experience of listening to the record.

That visual style — a seemingly deliberate attempt to merge punk and Situationist imagery (but with no actual cause to advocate) with the idea of outsider art — later became pervasive in indie rock thanks to Pavement (who are largely indebted to The Fall in just about every way possible) and in Stanley Donwood’s designs for Radiohead. Donwood has filtered a very similar aesthetic and tone through graphic design software to suit Radiohead’s fixation with technology. The disjointed images and handwritten text are still there, but it adds up to a much bleaker, more oppressive feeling that suits the records incredibly well. Donwood’s also big on maximizing the potential of physical packaging, and really making opening and unpacking the record an experience. I remember discovering months after the fact that there was a second booklet of artwork hidden behind the tray in the Kid A packaging, and how it drew me right back into the record again. I don’t think that either The Fall or Radiohead’s art is an obvious visual inspiration in the work I do, but they do help to remind me that design and packaging have an opportunity to deepen the experience of listening to a record. It can take a passive activity and make it active.

We’re in a unique time right now for music design. I know that no matter how deliberate the packaging and design of a record, at least half of the people who actually like the record enough to pay for it will likely never see anything beyond a JPEG in the corner of their iTunes. I’m guilty of this myself. The challenge, then, is to find a way to reward the people who are still willing to go out and buy a physical record. I see it as my job to find a way to make it more immersive. That’s not to say that people who download records are listening to them the wrong way – it is ultimately about the music, of course, and the music is strong enough to stand on its own. But if I can give a listener an excuse to actually sit down and spend time with the art while they listen, studying the images for hidden details, or reading through liner notes and lyrics that feel like letters from a friend, then I feel like that can only result in closer attention to the music itself.

It’s such a unique time in music. It seems like the whole system is being rewired — and as is usual with the push of new technology — we lose as much as we gain. I think of that period in the 1400’s after Johannes Gutenberg unleashed the power of mechanical, moveable type. Something fundamental was lost when people moved away from a primarily oral culture to an increasingly literate culture, but there was so much that was gained too. I feel like we’re in another transition period right now, between the more immediately physical version of music to this kind of disembodied format. And there’s such this great art form that I feel is in jeopardy — the record cover sleeve. Not to get too esoteric, but I feel like it’s been the visual art that’s been most embraced by the middle class. It’s been really subversive, I think. You’ve got the gallery guys, and that stuff is super interesting, but often, it just feels reserved for the elite class, even when it’s thumbing its nose at the elite, and then you’ve got advertising on the complete other end of the spectrum, where there’s just very little art, and then in the middle sits the album cover art. That was a long preamble to the next question: What do you do for the digital buyer? How do you translate album cover art for the completely digital age? Do you even try?

There’s a very real challenge in translating it, and I think it’s part of a larger issue with art in the digital age. In an odd way, it feels like this transition is opposite of the one that took place in the move from oral tradition to the printed word. So many things that we’ve taken as a given to be physical objects are returning to an ephemeral state. Music is always ephemeral to a degree – a fleeting moment captured on recording media to be re-experienced on demand. Packaging began as a means for protecting the media – an extension of that capturing of the ephemeral. Eventually its form evolved to copy that function. The entire physical object is an extension of the music. This has fundamentally changed the way we discuss the music itself, both as fans and as artists. Visual shorthand has become such a huge part of how music is contextualized. It’s easy, because up until recently, with the exception of pop radio, album artwork was the first impression listeners got of a record, either through advertising or in the store.

Digital distribution and leak culture have changed this completely. Records find their way onto the hard drives of fans (and eager detractors) sometimes before the artwork is publicized or even finished. And as previously mentioned, even hardcore fans of a record may never see the artwork beyond a JPG. The contextual power of album artwork has been diminished, which is both liberating and challenging. It removes the tendency to try to guide the conversation around a record, or to nudge artists in the direction of a style or movement via visual cues. That conversation begins earlier than ever, and in places where labels and music press have little if any sway. And it forces designers and artists to develop album art that makes a real statement on its own – one that complements the record but does not attempt to define it. It has to stand as its own thing. A thing that has traditionally, by necessity, been defined by the physical limitations of its original purpose: to protect the fragile media within. So what happens to the artwork when it no longer has that limitation and definition? If there’s nothing to package per se, how do we incorporate a visual element into the music?

The options available through most digital venues are limited. In practice most music packaging is translated into a full-screen PDF booklet that incorporates images and text from the artwork. To me this is more of a functional, informational tool – it gives the digital buyer access to lyrics and liner notes. But the necessary limits on file size and compatibility really hinder a good aesthetic translation of the album art. Which gets at the heart of the issue – what is the prime, definitive version of the artwork? As a designer trained in print and a record collector, for me that’s likely always going to be the LP. Everything else is an adapted version of that original artwork.

I acknowledge that this thinking gives short shrift to a predominantly digital audience, but in part I think that’s inevitable. The means for listening to digital music don’t currently leave much room for artwork, or control over how it’s viewed, both now and in the future. Sure, you can bundle videos or digital images with an MP3 download. But go find a CD from ten or even five years ago that included multimedia content. Chances are the first thing you will notice is that the quality is extremely poor by current standards. Digital technology evolves so quickly that it’s not possible to create a timeless accompaniment to the music. The artists I work with don’t want their music to feel dated in a few years, and in the same way I don’t want to bundle a record in digital artwork that’s going to look inept in a few years. The records deserve better than that.

The issue then is to find a way to incorporate digital art and technology into the music experience. In the same way that a great package can be immersive, I like that artists are trying to find a way to create a sense of community around their music that’s just as engaging, but has the ability to evolve and change with technology instead of being frozen in time. Fan forum sites have been around since the beginning of the internet, but I think that much like the way recording technology has been democratized, the access to web development tools has improved, and any band with a computer can put together a portal for their community to come together that’s also a living work of art. To me this is the digital analog to album artwork, rather than anything that is sold with a record.

Since we started this conversation with Bon Iver, I might as well bring them up here as an example. They rolled out a new website to coincide with the new album, and it combines the artwork, information, and social networking potential around the band into something really great. And Justin has really devoted himself to keeping it flush with new content, which is critical. It creates a visual, informational experience that finally matches the ephemeral nature of the music. It doesn’t replace album art – rather we’re moving forward with the opportunity to have two completely different but complementary visual treatments of a record. And in the same way that you don’t exactly have to buy a record to experience it digitally, an artful web presence isn’t something bands or labels are selling to fans. Like the joy of seeing a band live and being in the presence of other fans, it’s more an invitation to experience the culture around the music on a deeper level. It’s this notion that designers, artists and record labels need to embrace, rather than trying to find a way to squeeze our traditional notion of album artwork into a shoe that just doesn’t fit.

One more question for you: what’s next for you? What are you looking forward to?

Between the three labels (Jagjaguwar, Dead Oceans and Secretly Canadian) I do some degree of art direction and/or design on 40-50 releases each year, along with producing promotional and advertising materials for the records and the labels in general. So that keeps me incredibly busy. Most of our upcoming projects are still fairly hush-hush, but in particular I’m really excited about the warm reception given to the new album by The War on Drugs, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming release of Gauntlet Hair’s debut album. Both of these are great examples of artwork that I feel really serves the music well, and both were fun projects to work on.

I feel really lucky to be able to make a living doing something that I enjoy and feel passionate about, so I’m really just focused on continuing to do that. As long as people buy records, I’d like to be able to design some of them.

I’m a ridiculous fan of Luna, just to get that out of the way. How did you start working with them?

I love Luna too. They are one of my very favorite bands ever. I feel fortunate to have worked with them and with Dean Wareham & Britta Philips after Luna disbanded. I was a fan first. Someone at Elektra Entertainment (Luna’s label) gave me a copy of Bewitched and I fell in love at first listen. It turned out that Luna had the same management as the Talking Heads, and I knew one of their managers from working with her on the Talking Heads’ art book project. She invited me to design the package for Luna’s 1995 album, Penthouse.

How did the packaging come together and what font did you use?

Dean had discovered Ted Croner’s magical photos of New York City and knew they were just right for the package. Three pictures were used: the cover photo of the lit-up skyscraper, a group of light-streaked high-rise buildings, and a blurry speeding taxi. (This same taxi photo appeared on the cover of Bob Dylan’s 2006 album, Modern Times.) I hired Nitin Vadukul, one of my all-time favorite photographers, to shoot the grainy black-and-white panoramic portrait of the band. Everything came together just right. That was the first time I used Interstate, but certainly not the last time I used this font!

How did you get into music packaging design?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a rock musician. I figured that the closest I would ever get was designing album covers. I went to art school, and graduated with a degree in fine art. One thing led to another. I did some illustration, learned typesetting, paste-up and basic graphic design. In 1979, two friends and I started Manhattan Design. We went on to create the MTV logo and that led to jobs in the music industry. After Manhattan Design dissolved in 1991, I continued to design music packaging.

What were some early influences on your work? Did you ever get to work with any of your heroes?

When I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s everything was an influence, especially the music. I couldn’t wait to find out what the next Beatles and Stones albums were going to sound like, and—just as importantly to me—look like. Then came the phenomenal work of Hipgnosis. The images they came up with for albums by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and others just blew my mind.

The musicians I have worked with are my real heroes—at least some of them. David Bowie and Brian Eno, Natalie Merchant. And a few who weren’t my heroes before I worked with them, but whom I ended up respecting enormously, like Henry Rollins, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, Kronos Quartet, Dean Wareham, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and So Percussion. Working with David Byrne and the other Talking Heads and all those visual artists on “What The Songs Look Like: Contemporary Artists Interpret Talking Heads Songs” was amazing. I look back at the art in that book, and I can’t believe it really happened.

You’ve worked in such a broad diversity of styles. You’ve done work like Luna’s Penthouse and Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but then you’ve art designed / art-directed for Sonic Youth albums. Very, very different work there. How do you approach each project?

I try my best to be as open minded and receptive as I can be, and to make myself as invisible in the process as possible. Ideally, I temporarily become part of the band without them knowing it. Listening is the most important thing. Being a fan can help, but that can also lead to disappointment. I try to let the music guide me visually in finding the right artist or photographer to create the perfect image for the album. The best results often occur when a window is left open for surprises and happy accidents.

You just mentioned that you and your studio designed the MTV logo, one of the most immediately recognizable typographic logos in the entertainment industry. How did you approach the creative process on that design?

My studio, Manhattan Design, was in a very tiny room in Greenwich Village. Although this design studio had a very established-sounding name it was kind of a joke. My partners and I, Pat Gorman and Patti Rogoff, chose the name to fool potential clients into thinking we had been around for a while. We didn’t have much experience or money, but we made up for it with spirit and creativity. We weren’t famous and we didn’t know anyone famous, but somehow we managed to earn a living.

A friend of mine from early childhood, Fred Seibert, called me about a project. He was working for a big corporation that was planning a 24-hour music cable television station. He said they didn’t know what they would be showing but they were going to have to fill 24 hours, 7 days a week with it. In those days there weren’t any rock videos; it was all mostly short performance films. Fred said they needed a logo for the station. He said that some established designers had already been hired but he had squeezed some additional money out of the corporation to give us a shot. We began doing many sketches—lots and lots of them. The earliest ideas featured musical notes and other obvious symbols. Those were all quickly dismissed.

At some point an outline drawing of a bold, sans serif “M” appeared on a piece of paper. One of us then drew dimensional sides to the “M”. After that, a variety of groupings of the letters “TV” were added. Everything seemed too normal looking. I thought the logo needed to be less corporate somehow—defaced or graffiti-ed. I took an enlarged copy of the fat “M” drawing and went into our studio’s narrow stairwell with a piece of acetate and a can of black spray paint, and—voila—the MTV log pretty much as it appears today. The three of us then played around with scale and proportion, and after some tweaking the sketches were sent up to Fred. He presented them to suits. We never attended these meetings so I don’t know what really went on, but the story is that sketches actually ended up in a wastebasket several times and were then fished out.

The next, and probably most revolutionary part of the design came about when we were asked to come up with “corporate colors” for the logo. The decision was made that there wouldn’t be any. Knowing that many people were going to be working with the logo made us think that just like rock music, the logo should always be changing—the “M” and the “TV” could be any color or pattern. The concept of a chameleon-like logo was brand new.

The rest is history. Sometimes I think about those days and it seems like another lifetime.

That’s pretty amazing. What’s next for you? What’s on the horizon?

A summer vacation in Nova Scotia. The Atlantic Ocean is on the horizon.