"3 Feet High & Rising"
A modern re-imagining of a classic album.
The brief gave us the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between imagery and music, and to identify common design trends that help viewers to identify differing cultures. We were asked choose an existing album and create two new cover designs of our choice. One version was to be a modern day re-imagining of the original artwork, while the second version was to be a recreation of the artwork using the visual language of a different genre. My choice was De La Soul’s 1989 album, Three Feet High & Rising.
The album’s original artwork is a collage composed using printed photographs, fluorescent markers, colourful paper, and captured with a rostrum camera. The result was a bright, poppy aesthetic that the group claimed was a “challenge against the prevailing macho hip hop codes which dominate to this day.” My first design (seen below) aimed to stray truthful to these principles while using modern techniques to inform the design process. The final outcome is a sunny and cheerful digital collage that represents De La Soul’s alternative ideologies.
It must be noted that a common trend in this era of hip hop was to feature imagery of the band members themselves, and I was unable to obtain one that is royalty-free. In order to overcome this, an existing photo of the group was used to create the silhouette that can be seen as part of the design’s track listing
Liner notes.
Design process: Cut and paste collage.
This second design envisages the album in the visual language of the post-rock genre. Drawing on examples from such bands as Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Sigur Ros, this design aims to mimic the clean typography, grainy photography and simplistic scenes of nature that can be seen throughout the genre.
Design process: Photo editing with textures.
