A.I. Artificial Intelligence

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A.I. Artificial Intelligence 3-CD set

La-La Land Records, 2015

Over the past few years, La-La Land Records has released several new, and frequently expanded, editions of soundtrack albums from celebrated film composer John Williams. I’ve had the pleasure of designing and art directing a few of them, with this being my seventh and perhaps most extensive design.

While the Oscar-nominated score had been released on CD at the time of the film's release in 2001, this deluxe 3-disc edition was newly mastered and assembled by producer Mike Matessino, working with the cooperation of Mr. Williams and director Steven Spielberg.

The cover of the first CD soundtrack for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (left) used the keyart from the film's original marketing campaign. First revealed in the teaser trailer—where the silhouette of David steps out of the A to form the I—the initials were also used in the film's theatrical poster, using a simple brushed metal texture within the letterforms.

For the new CD cover (above right), I wanted to include an additional visual within those iconic initials. The reason was two-fold: to give the new cover some distinction from the single-dics original soundtrack edition, and to create a stronger connection to the film itself. The image of David and Monica, the mother whose love he spends the film searching for but never attaining, is deliberately cropped to suggest the separation between them.

I somehow spent most of the development of this project thinking it was to be a 2-disc release. For the disc artwork, I had originally decided to use two photos of David—one with Monica (the dream of the “real” boy) and the other with the prostitute Gigolo Joe, (the reality of the mecha).

When I was finally reminded that it was actually a 3-disc edition (whoops...sorry, guys), I had to rethink the artwork for each of the discs. In the end though, I came to realize a photo I'd been sent by the studio of David and a supermecha from the film's finale not only fit the established visual theme of pairing David with an important figure from his journey, but would also create a new thematic for the visuals. For two discs, the theme had been dream vs. reality, but now these three discs together serve as milestones in the course of David's tragic and, arguably wasted, life and the figures who share it with him: his birth as he's imprinted upon by Monica, his adolescence where he faces a harsh new world away from home, on the run with Joe, and his "death," where he finds peace thanks to the supermechas.