Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Read-Along Book and Record set
September, 2015
In the hype for September's "Force Friday" sales event, I couldn't help but think of all the Star Wars merch of my younger days, particularly the read-along book and record sets which served as my primary mode of transportation whenever I wanted to lose myself in that far, far away galaxy.
And then I thought, why not take my nostalgia out for a spin and give my pastiche design muscles a proper workout?
For those of you unfamiliar with the little gems shown above (meaning those of you with the good sense to have been born after the dawn of the home video era) these read-along books and records originated in the mid-1960s and were sold to children eager to relive their favorite cartoons and movies via their home record players.
Most of the original titles were published by Disneyland Records and featured the same songs and voices from their animated films. Later on, other companies like Power Records got in on the act, adapting classic Marvel and DC comic book stories. But the ones I remember so well featured instead professional voice actors doing impressions (often convincing ones) of their cinematic counterpart characters in quick and breezy 10-minute re-tellings. At the beginning of each record, the narrator would remind you to turn the page, "when you hear R2-D2 beep like this..." or you heard the whaa-pish of Indiana Jones cracking his whip.
I had a hefty stack of these in my parent's basement and pretty much wore them out while copying the photos from each page with my crayons. Surprisingly, these read-along recordings still exist today, now coming packaged with CDs. No doubt in a few months there'll be one for The Force Awakens, but I wanted to take a crack at something decidely more retro.
Using Adobe Illustrator, I began by redrawing the Read-Along records logo, which consistently ran in the upper left corner of the cover for every read-along book and record release. In later years, the logo was updated to feature a cassette, but for the full-on throwback feel, this had to be a record.
In keeping with the spirit of this bygone design era, I decided to limit myself to using only officially released photos from the film in my design. My plan was to combine the disparate photos shown above, in much the same way as similarly unrelated stills were combined for the Empire Strikes Back read-along album cover. Ideally, I was hoping the effect would have a rather rudimentary, pre-Photoshop look, with images cut out and overlaid.
Comparison of the original, officially-released still from The Force Awakens with a brightened, sharpened and cutout detail.
Unfortunately, I don't think the cover turned out as intended. This is partly due to the fact that the only decent shot of the villain's Vader-like mask is from the merchandising campaign and is clearly a digital painting and not a photo. But it could also be my fault, as I gave it a little more polish in Photoshop than was needed.
So I designed a pair of alternate covers (assuming I'm allowed a few alternate covers for a wholly artificial project). Truthfully, both of these feel much more vintage to me in their simplicity.
The label design for the record and the back cover were a treat to design. Surprisingly, one of the official photos of the villain, Kylo Ren, with a trio of stormtroopers was eerily similar to the original back cover design of the Star Wars read-along (both are shown below). All that was needed was a little digital finesse to make the photo appear to have been illustrated by hand.
