Smiles

It is possible to say that one of the best British bands of the past 25 years are Spiritualized. The music from this band varies from the spiritual and almost religious to the very loud noise rock feedback sessions. So for those who have not listened to any of their music, do it, Buy "Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space" and listen to it in full.

Anyway, a compilation of their greatness was put together by my father and he wanted a front sleeve as well as inserts and back cover doing for this album. So being a big fan of the discography, I hopped to it. The lead singer during gigs prefers to sit and play his guitar so this was a beautiful image to start, I thought a silhouette of this image would look pretty sweet. I decided I had to keep the design in the sty;e of their designer Mark Farrow (a design legend who has worked with the like of the Manic Street Preachers and Pets Shop Boys). Below is the front in which this silhouette features; the name of the album is from a tribute video to the band.

 

The back cover proved to be more difficult to do as their was no obvious inspirational ideas or images until I came across a nice live shot in which displayed the large screen normally set behind the band. This particular pattern was very simple and worked really well in this context so I used that. editing it to be the same colour as the front.It links to the front as well as they are both inspired by live shots.

Psychedelia has Gotten to Me

Whether people have noticed or not, I have recently become a big fan of Psychedelic poster design as well as the music to accompany it. The debut album by 13th floor elevators is an amazing piece of art as well as the mind opening music. The Piper at the Gates of the Dawn is also an important album to me. The best Pink Floyd album in my opinion. 

But back to posters; very regularly they would feature strange images or nudity just to draw people to the poster. This also made it link to the hippy mood at the time who's mind expanding drugs made them see some strange things. I haven't taken any to make these posters but I do like the styles that they created. The colours were wild, so I have chosen some of them for mine. They were originally screen printed back in the day, unfortunately this process is not easy to come by at home. So these posters were done on a computer. I hope that you like them. Don't be scared of them. Please.