Brief
Following the brief from the ISTD 2025 Student Assessment scheme, I chose to create a product that explores the traditional and contemporary form of book making. Following my own personal interests, I went beyond the brief by redesigning the packaging for a pre-existing vinyl record.
Outcome
After assessing The 1975's Live From Madison Square Garden's original packaging – I have completely reimagined the physical format of the album. Designing a product that feels special, of high-quality, and a commemoration of the band's landmark show.
Year
2025
Client
Student project
Approaches
Editorial
Sketching
Microtypography
Music packaging
Book-crafting
Letterpress
Moodboard
Beginning the creative process for this project, I created a moodboard of recent items and designs from The 1975's most recent campaign for most recent album release, Being Funny In A Foreign Language.
Original product analysis
Being an owner of this particular vinyl record, I've had several issues with the design and quality of its packaging. Overall, I find the design of it lackluster as for a live album there's nothing much to show for the live experience. There is no photos from the show, or any highlights of key moments from it (despite the show being live recorded for a film released later along the line), when this could have been a great opportunity to create a product that captures the iconic moments from the live show and help fans relive their memories.
Book content
Before any creating any physical ideas, I brainstormed ideas for potential content to fill the pages for the album's book. By watching the concert film, I saved quotes from the live show that I believed could be used to create an expressive typographic page. As well as using photos, this idea helps create further references to the show that fans can pick up on and help relive those iconic moments.
Cover sketching
My art direction for the cover was to create a design that best represents the band's recent tour, and to match the energy of the band's live show – which I feel the current packaging does not do.
Several of my ideas are inspired by The 1975's previous art-direction and album campaigns, such as Being Funny In A Foreign Language. In the latter sketches, I experimented with the use of a banner design on the cover – derived from the album design of Notes On A Conditional Form. Photography was also considered for the cover as it's a simple way to reference the show, and granted me creative freedom to of choosing an iconic moment from the concert film to grace the cover.
Page planning
With a general idea for a cover, I begun creating a visual idea of what the book's pages may look like, and how it could be effectively organised. This helped my understanding of the project, and how I would craft it – as well as rearranging pages, if I felt it disrupted the flow of the book.
Letterpress & crafting
Having the fortune of letterpress technology in my University's department, I used it to my advantage to print the album's title. This particular print is used for the cover's banner – when folded, it spans across the front and back cover. In this stage, I also began looking at the physical crafting of the album cover, creating a test dummy, to experiment with cover sizing and placement.
Letterpress lock-up, ready for print
Initial test-prints using lock-up
Beginning of album cover construction using blue textured paper
Crafting test for hardback book cover
Video & photo gallery
The final product combines golden-halftone photography from the show, expressive, loud typography to form a vinyl-record that I believe now reflects the magnitude of the excellent live recording from The 1975. The front cover features photography of lead singer Matty Healy's iconic moment during live-show exclusive track Consumption. The back cover now features the names and roles of the band, as well as the supporting members and crew for the touring band.
Due to size and printing limitations, the record has been imaged as a double 7" vinyl instead of its current 2LP setting. However, this only gave me more focus for four particular songs off the album to design. If I were to make this vinyl-record again, I would certainly attempt to make it a full, hardback 2LP record, and create lyric pages for each of the twenty-five songs included on the record.
