They say if you look back at your old work and hate it, it might be a sign that you’re getting better.

I found some of my 2017-18 work from college, as my 2016 intro-to-graphic-design course work’s since been lost, and boy oh boy. Some of it’s genuinely brutal, with others simply being a sign of the times, seeing me treading over tired design tropes trying to find my voice.

This one from 21st of September, 2017, is doing that whole minimalist-y digital illustration style that you’d see all over tumblr and what not. Not too bad considering, but nothing groundbreaking or all that interesting.

Jesus Christ this one bro lol. From Christmas Eve, 2018, the writings on the wall man. Shitty overlay paper texture, really poorly treated images, and an idea that ultimately goes nowhere. Just like edgy whatever stuff. But ya know, I was 17— I was learning, pushing whatever boundaries I thought were there, and making what I thought was cool at the time.

Ten years in, I’m still learning as I go. I’ve been expanding on my style, incorporating different techniques, and overall trying to be a more interesting maker.

I’ve gone back and remastered some of my older work, some from just a year or two ago, to varying results.

A year by year remaster of this 2023 Oasis portrait tee shows an unexpected progression. Piece starts out with a good idea, but pretty horrific treatment. In 2024 I thought, hey, I’ve come a long way, lemme redo this one with my new techniques. Same thing in 2025. Three very different results, three levels of quality. To my surprise, V2 was the best one. V3 isn’t bad, it’s got much better contrast and line work, but ends up being a bit too clean for the concept.

This next one went a whole lot better.

A leaps and bounds improvement, this is still one of my favourite pieces to date. A J. Cole image swap, 100x better overall image treatment, and a more accurate skin tone colour palette takes this one over the edge.

In the music world too, we’ve seen good and bad remasters, the Taylor’s Version rereleases coming to mind. I don’t recall any of the rerecords adding to or improving upon the originals in any significant way. Also, after she got her masters back, I remember seeing Swifties rejoicing that they could finally listen to the originals again, now that the royalties were rightfully going to Taylor. Mixes were hollowed out, vocals sounded a little off, and all that early ‘00s/10s pop shimmer was nowhere to be found.

On the other hand, The Beatles’ 2023 remix and remaster of their greatest hits was phenomenal. The new mixes are incredibly rich, and most importantly fixed the decades old mess of hard stereo panning all over their early releases. Some could argue that the new mixes sanded down some of that elementary rock ’n roll charm, but imo it was absolutely necessary and breathed entirely new life back into an already eternally timeless catalogue.

With remasters coming out left and right these days, it’s important to be discerning of their quality. Some may have had all of the idea with none of the execution.

As long as you preserve the original untouched somewhere, go back and mess around with your early work. Redo it with the knowledge you’ve gained along the way. Fix it, ruin it, do whatever with it. It’s your stuff after all!

Album covers are the visualisation of music, an invisible medium. Since forever, we’ve known these visualisations as humble squares. Squares that appear above the track info on streaming, adorning the front of a jewel case, or printed on a 12” vinyl. Through all these platforms, squares have mostly remained.

The next release of iOS changes how album covers are presented on Apple Music. Rather than having the cover as its own separate thing, it’ll effectively become the UI.

Why the perception of album covers has forever changed

The role of the cover has shifted. When listening to brat for instance, or scrolling through its tracks, it makes your whole viewport the bright bratty green. Your device is the album. It’s no longer a square image contained and surrounded by white, it’s now this amorphous being, and it’s all you can see.

Abbey Road for instance, before now, we’ve only ever really been in contact with it as a static square image. Whats inside the frame is whats there, anything outside of that is left up to the imagination.

The whole experience is altered.

Your mental association with the album cover has gone from being a sort of supplemental component to the music, to a wholesale device transformation. Almost turns it into a home screen wallpaper, or background dressing of some kind. It's become the set design to the show, surrounding you. This is the proper way to adapt a generally antiquated art form to the new meta while retaining all of its best qualities.

For context, currently, an album with a standard cover looks like this →

Typical square format, all parts of the image contained and fully visible.

Here’s how the current album page looks, versus how it’ll look in the next update, when the colours spill into the UI →

Even albums that don’t include a full-screen animated version use this all-over colour splash →

This is honestly incredibly exciting lol, it really brings albums back to life in a refreshing and fun way. Just this simple colour bleed adds so much to the browsing and listening experience, really brings you into the mood of the record.

Very important to note that Apple’s done this before though. On iOS 8, we saw the same exact design language, but mostly on the track list pages, not so much on the player.

Apple stepped into this, walked it right back, and are now years later slamming down the football even harder.

The new “now playing” screen will remain mostly similar as far as I can tell, which was designed well with animation in mind →

I’ve loved using AM in this current iteration, it makes me anticipate an album’s animated version, to see how the colours meld into the UI. The whole experience is enhanced imo, and suddenly I associate the album with a wider, taller, more colourful visual.

Spotify on the other hand, with their awful “Canvas” player, jangles keys in front of you, rather than utilising a tasteful display of the artwork.

They just loop some portion of the music video, or have some choppy clip that has little to do with the cover. Of course you can (and should) turn this off, but it’s opt-out so nobody will.

It’s fascinating how the form of album covers has evolved over the years, with streaming generally taking the charge with listening habits. The presentation of album covers should be coveted and protected, and I’m very glad to see the OS I use everyday handling it with artful consideration.

I will very often hold my phone and stare at the UI and artwork in tandem, observing how they interact with one another. All of this paired with the recent Liquid Glass update??? It’s just so gorgeous I love it all so much.

Interested to know what you guys think about changes like this, or if you mostly just stick something on, lock your phone and move on with your life.

2026 has kicked off, and since the last newsletter (december 2023 omg), i’ve pivoted from album covers to merch design, but i missed having a place to share more fleshed out industry / design thoughts.

because of said pivot, i don’t wanna pigeon-hole this publication too much. i wanna talk about design more broadly, but naturally through the lens of someone who primarily works in merch. i wanna talk about issues in the space, things you should pay attention to, media recommendations, and possibly emerging trends. the tone may bob around from lighthearted and casual to more “serious” and “professional”, not set on that yet. some may be in proper title caps, and others in full lower-case, all depends on how i’m feeling, i have no idea.

either way, i hope you stick around for whatever changes may come, get involved in the discussion, and evolve with glasses as time goes on.

talk soon ∼

I notoriously have a hard time with hobbies. I see and hear about every other person on earth with a hobby and something to look forward to dumping their time into after work, but I’ve had such a hard time with that in adulthood. It leaves me with a gross amount of free time that ends up falling into YouTube and Twitter.

Earlier this year my girlfriend and I tried painting tiny little square canvases, and while she pulled different things together from Pinterest, I naturally gravitated towards album covers.

I wanted to share my progress and hopefully it sparks something in someone reading this and they create something fun too. I’ve always hated hated hated painting (cuz I’ve always been so shit at it lol) but keeping it at this smaller scale into something I love has made it a lot more gratifying, challenging, and fun. Take a look!!!

Been a lotta fun pulling these together and I have many more blank canvases to fill up and hopefully one day I’ll have enough room to display everything properly.

Happy creating!

That time again, everyone’s stats are in, what did you listen to on loop this year? For me, it was basically the same thing again lol. I never really surprise myself!

Here were my 2023 favorites—

ALBUMS

SZA - SOS

My top stats every year are always pretty basic, I don’t think I’ve ever had someone nobody’s heard of in my top 10 ever. What does that say about my music taste? I guess it says more about what I’m consistently returning to more than anything.

I loooove this whole album, I only have “F2F” deleted, it just sounds amateur and Disney to me, I don’t think pop punk fits SZA all too well. Besides that, man this album is so smooth to listen to. She tried a bunch of genres and sounds, and did all surprisingly well (except pop punk hehe). Songs like “Gone Girl” absolutely soar over you, especially when it explodes near the end. I love the rapping/singing mesh on the opener and title track, and the full on rapping with “Smoking on my Ex Pack”. “Low” slaps harder than it has any business slapping, and “Ghost in the Machine” with Phoebe Bridgers is an effortless and haunting collab that should’ve taken place years ago.

Favorite Tracks: Nobody Gets Me, Low, Far

DRAKE - FOR ALL THE DOGS

I’m sure you expected this one, as did I, but I can’t deny how much I’ve returned to this one. This one did take some growing on me though, I didn’t connect with it much at all in the beginning, but with repeated listens and different contexts/moods, I grew to love it.

With the additional “Scary Hours” Edition, and the rapping we got on those 6 tracks, I only love it more now. As with all of Drake’s stuff, its got infinite replay value for me.

Favorite Tracks: Members Only (feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR), 8am in Charlotte, Bahama Promises

METALLICA - 72 SEASONS

Another one that stuck around for me is the new Metallica record, the first one since 2016’s Hardwired…to Self Destruct. It’s just more of the same greatness to me, what I really love the most about this album is the production/mixing. It’s super duper punchy and hits really hard, but remains dynamic and balanced. I love the sound of the drums and snares, James’ vocals are the best they’ve sounded in the later-era, and hopefully one day I can design something for them!

Favorite Tracks: 72 Seasons, Shadows Follow, Sleepwalk My Life Away

…also

JACK HARLOW - JACKMAN.

THE KID LAROI - THE FIRST TIME

THE BEATLES, OASIS, NAS, ETC…

Share

SONGS

DRAKE - SEARCH & RESCUE

What felt like a fresh take on the signature nocturnal Drake sound mixed with newer production and insanely good vocal lines.

SZA - NOBODY GETS ME

A massive highlight from SOS, I love the crisp acoustic guitar and nostalgic nature of this track, super catchy melodies and overall killer performance from SZA.

JACK HARLOW - BLAME ON ME

WOOOOOW I love this fuckin song lol. Super washed out beat with this incredible eerie and emotional sample on top, Jack brings us three different perspectives on his upbringing, leveling up his game in the process.

…also

DRAKE - THE RESISTANCE

DRAKE & 21 SAVAGE - BROKE BOYS

J. COLE - IMMORTAL

SORRY FOR ALL THE DRAKE LOL

WHERE AM I GOING?

2023 saw a massive career pivot for me in that merch design became my main focus. Before this, I was sort of a jack of all trades in the space. I’ve still only ever done one “official” physical album packaging project with Amber Mark’s Three Dimensions Deep, and I thought packaging/album cover design was gonna be my main trajectory. That all changed this year.

I’v known for a little bit that my design style always inherently lent itself more to merch design than album cover design, as I used to mainly do only type-led compositions, and I honestly don’t usually prefer that style on covers. I like to leave it to the amazing photographers of the world, the 3D artists, the real technicians out there doing it really well. I will still absolutely take on any music design gig, but the ones coming in now are almost always merch-related, which I’m happy about. If you only knew the amount of artist merch I had!!!

Thanks for sticking around for another year, I’m glad I was able to pick up the slack a bit on GLASSES for the last chunk of the year.

Here’s to an amazing 2024!

As far as releases go, 2022 spoiled us. All the biggest artists in the world dropped huge albums, and this year it felt like we got next to nothing. Not to discount the great releases we did get, but it definitely felt like the day after your big birthday bash when all your friends have left, you already opened your presents, and now you’re left cleaning up yesterday’s party.

The problem with this year’s review is that, well, it’s not really this year’s review. I’ve spoken about all these albums and their covers before because, they all released in 2022.

Based on Spotify’s 2023 Wrapped statistics, the top 3 most streamed albums of the year were SOS by SZA at #3, Midnights by Taylor Swift at #2, and Un Verano Sin Ti by Bad Bunny at #1 (again). Despite not being in the top spot, Taylor Swift was both Spotify and Apple Music’s artist of the year.

#3 | SOS, SZA

Last year’s #3 was Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR, which incidentally released in 2021 and not 2022. Same thing here with SOS, it came out in December of 2022. So many people were upset about this album topping lots of 2023 lists, but Jesus, what chance does an album released in December have of making an impact on that year? Give it a rest.

This was my top played album of 2023, I love it so much, got the CD the day it came out and have not stopped playing it since. I’m very excited for LANA, the deluxe for this, although I wish she’d just release it as its own project.

Shot by Daniel Sannwald, with additional graphics handled by Viktor H, SOS is one of the stronger covers in this bunch. But of course, I’ve written an entire dedicated review to this album cover a year ago when it dropped!

#2 | Midnights, Taylor Swift

Another album cover that has its own dedicated in-depth review, I do like the Midnights covers a lot. She released about a hundred alternates for each physical and digital version, which is pretty silly and cash-grabby, but hey that’s the game I guess.

Read the full in-depth review here—

#1 | Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny

Somehow, Bad Bunny’s 2022 blockbuster release is Spotify’s #1 globally most streamed album, a second year in a row. This cover is super loud, whacked out, and was designed by Adrian Hernandez (Ugly Primo).

This is the one cover that didn’t get its own dedicated review, but I do like it for what it is. I love how expressive it is, and how much the sounds on the album really do reflect this little illustrative universe. The hard and grounding line of the horizon contrasts nicely against all the other organic lines that make up the rest of the scene. The colours smack you across the face, and are a dream to stare at while it’s playing on Apple Music.

Again, 2023 was a good release year, but nowhere near the level of 2022. The biggest albums of this year came out last year, Taylor Swift absolutely ripped it up again, Frank Ocean never dropped, and Kanye continues to dive deeper into a hole he can’t seem to climb out of.

All of this considered, there’s not much to say about these covers I haven’t already, but I’m very much looking forward to whatever the fuck 2024 has for us all.

Drop your top streamed album of the year below!

Album covers are very important to me. As a graphic designer in the music industry, it used to be my main focus, until eventually sliding into the role of a full-time merch designer. Tech is also really important to me, and something I try to keep up with, despite the hyper speed it can move at.

Cover art hasn’t really changed all that much since its inception. I’ve tried to track changes in the make up and composition of covers over time, but even with the evolution from 12” vinyl to tiny phone screens, we still get visually complex covers just as much as simple iconic ones. When CDs were introduced, obviously the visual artists behind the covers had to consider the more-than-half size reduction users would experience with this new format, but not much changed. In the 1960s there was Sgt. Pepper’s, and in 2015 there was To Pimp a Butterfly. Visually intricate covers will live on as long as humans have eyes to look at them.

All this being said, with the advent of iOS 17, Apple Music users noticed a big change in how many album covers were displayed. There was more animation, more moving parts, and just more motion everywhere. We’d had animated cover art show up on the album page itself, but never in the actual player. Now, when you play a song with an animated cover, that same cover shows up seamlessly in the song player. Have a look for yourself what it looks like without animation versus with.

Album motion makes your album artwork come alive. Motion artwork provides a richer experience for your audience by helping set a mood or accentuate the concept of an album, before anyone presses Play. - Apple

Now, I may be a huge shill for Apple, but I think they look so so good. It seems like something I would’ve previously been against, maybe because I would’ve called it cheap, or because I was (and very much still am) too afraid to learn animation and was afraid I’d be out of a job!!!

This is such a gorgeous and immersive way to display album art, and it really truly does bring you deeper into the covers. I find myself leaving my phone unlocked while listening to music a lot more now, just so I can stare at it, similar to how a kid in the 70s would’ve done with their new shiny record sleeve. In this way, this is a huge step in the right direction for album art. It feels like an actual development in the space that we’ve not only never seen before, but one that grants digital formats a truly proprietary experience. Maybe you bought the album on vinyl or CD, but now you wanna see if it was well animated on Apple Music!

This should hugely affect the way album covers are conceived, drawn up, and designed. Of course the artist doesn’t have to include an animated version of their cover, the square ones have worked fine for almost a century now, but for me it definitely does add a huge edge to the playing experience. Artists should consider how the cover may be formatted differently, and how it might translate to this new aspect ratio. Some covers remain true to the static image with some moving flourishes here and there (Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, Michael Jackson’s Thriller), whereas others change entirely and show various shots of the artist or simply other visual effects (most notably Drake’s Take Care). Some are done absolutely terribly and detract from the overall quality (Oasis’ Be Here Now, Post Malone’s beerbongs & bentleys), but most are faithful recreations of the covers with this new exciting visual embellishment.

Luckily though, there are so few so far I’ve come across that look like this, most of them really are done well, and I’m excited when an album gets this treatment. Feels more premium!

I really wanna know what any other Apple Music users think of this change, and if you’re into it or not. Do you think this alters the visual artists’ responsibilities from now on? Do you think it should?

The Album Cover

For All The Dogs is Drake’s eighth studio album, and despite being his fifth release since 2020, has remained an extremely anticipated record.

Let’s have a look at this new cover in context of his last four (solo) releases, and look for any visual trends.

There aren’t any glaring visual trends, other than 3/4 of them being black. Each cover does have a clear subject, even CLB with its 12 pregnant emojis. That’s obviously the most lighthearted one here, and I’m honestly really interested to see how that one ages in 20 years.

Honestly, Nevermind and For All The Dogs have a menacing vibe to them, both had fans speculating some rappity-rap-rap dark energy, and while we got a little bit of that on Dogs, they turned out to be the same Drake albums we’ve come to expect.

The only true thread continuing through every Drake album cover is some element of absurdity or meme-ability to simply get people talking. He has to know this, the guy isn’t stupid, he’s one of the most self aware stars in the world. “All publicity is good publicity” clearly being hung up somewhere on his mansion walls.

While Dogs’ cover isn’t as immediately polarising as CLB, the fact that his 5 year old son drew it is enough for a lot of people. But from what I’ve seen about it, it appears to be generally favourable in the public eye.

Simply put, the covers great. The (almost) pure black background fits in line with the current trend of triple-A album covers doing the same, and sets a nice base for the photo-negative drawing to stand out.

The greenish-chalky color of the figure is so great, it contrasts nicely with that vibrant, bloody red of the eyes. The parental sticker is depicted in a similarly illustrated style, using the same chalky white, providing some simple cohesion. The aforementioned “photo-negative” of the figure was something I speculated before Drake put out the 8am in Charlotte video, where we see Adonis holding the original drawing on a white piece of paper.

The invert is actually so serendipitous as it looks so much better in my opinion. The fact that Adonis used a crystally-blue for the eyes on the original made them flip into that mean red we see now. Take a look at what the cover may have looked like with less post-production.

Also in the same video, Adonis reveals that the figure is actually a goat, and not a dog, as most of us probably assumed. He says it’s “Daddy Goat”, referring to Drake of course. I guess it makes sense with the long horn-like things on its head, but they could’ve flown as ears too. I’ve been pretty sick of the whole GOAT schtick going on not just in rap but most of pop culture the past however many years, we’ve gotten way too many goat-themed album covers too. Imagine thinking Polo G is the greatest of all time lol.

Something I wanted to point out is Drake’s appearance (and lack thereof) on his album covers. He shows up on 8 of 15 of his releases. Just over half, the string from 2019’s Care Package (barring 2020’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes) to now with 2023’s For All The Dogs, doesn't feature him in any way, whereas up to 2018’s Scorpion, he was on most of them in some way.

For comparison, J. Cole appears on all but one of his album covers with 2013’s Born Sinner, and Kendrick appears on all of his studio albums (he’s the baby on the Standard Edition of good kid, m.A.A.d city).

While not insanely important, I think it's interesting enough to note and consider when evaluating these people’s covers, as it reflects their artistry and view of their own work.

What do you guys think of the new Drake cover? The album itself? Were you expecting anything different? Disappointed? Surprised? Let me know!

If I’m dead honest too, it’s because GLASSES doesn’t provide any income at the moment, so the incentive falls entirely on passion, which I do have loads of, but it only goes so far.

As far as reviews, I’m definitely going to be doing For All The Dogs by Drake when it drops in a couple weeks, as I want to have the music to provide more of a contextual bed for the album cover. I may still do GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo, but I’m not sure, it’s one of the weakest visual runs for a major in a long while. It’s easier and more fun to talk about something you love!

I’ve still been weirdly gaining subscribers in this time off, so to any new readers, I do see and appreciate you! GLASSES isn’t dead, it isn’t going anywhere as far as I’m concerned right now, the issues will just be a bit more spaced out.

Thanks for reading + caring, speak soon!

The Album Cover

UTOPIA is Travis Scott’s fourth studio album, and easily the most anticipated record of the past couple years.

Placing this new cover (there are five), in context of Trav’s other releases, we can see that similar to the music, each one has tried to somewhat reinvent itself.

Placing all his covers together, there isn’t any overarching visual thread tying them all together, other than Travis being the subject on each. The color palettes of Rodeo, Birds, and UTOPIA are all extremely similar, with an overwhelming theme of browns, blacks, dark reds, and grays.

Rodeo and UTOPIA are actually extremely similar covers, both with dark backdrops (gunmetal grey and pure black respectively), a bottom-right parental advisory, and a shirtless Travis subject. Genius says UTOPIA features him as an action figure again, as an homage to Rodeo, but I just don’t see it. Because of the black backdrop, he does look a little uncanny, as the details are difficult to make out, but he still appears real to me.

Scott posted a flurry of visuals leading up to and after the album’s release, and one included this same cover with an AI looking head on the same body and shot.

I’m not sure why they added this particular version, as it is a pretty small change, but it does add another level of uncanniness and surreal horror to the image.

The other ones, while interesting in their own ways, come together to create this entirely disjointed collage of a dirty, grimy, and distorted dreamscape. There were so many visual artists, photographers, stylists, and designers deployed to bring these visuals to life that it was bound to be incoherent to a degree. Unlike the sloppy HEROES & VILLAINS rollout by Metro Boomin and co., UTOPIA’s mishmash of influences, peripherals, and ideas works well to its advantage. When you listen to the album, it really does sound like five photos forcefully jammed together, ripped up, cut into pieces, overlayed on one another, and thrown into a food processor, all in the best way possible.

THE OTHER FOUR COVERS

Speaking of the other covers, in the haze of this release, Travis dropped four other album covers on his socials, all by different visual creatives.

As of writing this, the credits are pretty all over the place, I’ve done some digging and couldn’t find a clean list of who did what exactly on each, but I did include what I could find here.

The images are all photography-based, as far as I can tell, including the mysterious balloon one. The second cover by Pieter Hugo (we don’t know who did the collaging and treatment), appears to be digital collage of some kind, it may have had some assistance from Studio Pending (Bryan Rivera, Travis Brothers, etc.), but we can’t know for sure as it’s mostly uncredited.

Again, as stated earlier, I think this wide scope of imagery and tone adds up really well for UTOPIA, crafting this weird, otherworldly landscape of eerie sights and sounds. My favourite of this bunch is either the upside down face or the balloon one, the latter seemingly influenced by Year of the Snitch by Death Grips.

THE DESIGN PERIPHERALS (CIRCUS MAXIMUS, LIVE AT THE PYRAMIDS, ETC.)

Mentioning Studio Pending earlier, they were in charge of the peripherals for this album, and I only know this as Bryan Rivera was intermittently displaying these posters on his Instagram story during the rollout. Travis released an accompanying film for the album titled “CIRCUS MAXIMUS”, and it got some really cool posters.

Here are a couple found online, insanely good direction by these guys, they seriously truly do not and have not missed ever. The poster on the right perfectly uses scale as a dramatic element to illustrate the size of this release and movie. Travis really does feel on top of the world right now, and we’re all just watching it happen.

These guys also put together some unbelievable merch, one of which I had to buy.

Really crazy stuff here, what can I really even say, it’s classic Studio Pending, distorted versions of what we’ve come to expect from merch. Interesting graphic placements paired with the same extreme mishmash of visual stylings and influences from the rollout, this merch is as good as it gets for me. We have photographic manipulation, experimental airbrushing and illustration, and even some 3D rendering by the looks of some of it. Posty, you coulda stuck with these guys and got more of this same treatment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

UTOPIA, as stated earlier, was easily the most anticipated album of the past few years or so. I wouldn't say it was up there with Frank or Kendrick, but it stopped the world in its tracks nonetheless. From the features carrying UTOPIA branded suitcases around, to the promise and retraction of a “Live at the Pyramids” debut show, the rollout has been one of the most engaging in recent memory. I’m loving the visuals, on every level, in every field they’ve come out in, from t-shirt to album cover, and I salute all the insane creative professionals who pulled this all together how they did. Album is sounding crazy too!

Thug speaks to us from behind bars, but looks at us from the courtroom.

The Album Cover

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS is Young Thug’s fourth studio album, and in an extremely dry release year, has caused a huge splash online.

Young Thug sort of has a famously stacked visual discography, so let’s place this new cover into context.

Almost all of his covers are notable in some way, my favourite being Slime Season 3 from 2016. I love the minimally illustrated portrait, depicting Thug with a gruesome eye injury dripping down his face. JEFFERY seems to be the general crowd favourite, with the dress even being displayed in a museum to this day.

With Thug being such a trailblazing voice in the story of hip-hop and trap specifically, his covers have all been quite odd and outstanding in their own ways. So Much Fun and Punk are both heavily designed and edited shots, whereas Barter 6 is a bit more “as is”, with the addition of some typography.

The BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS cover honestly needs to be studied, I actually cannot believe that artwork exists. It’s fucking crazy lol. Look at it closely if you never have, it basically comes back around to being incredible because of how fucked up it is.

BUSINESS is his first cover in black and white, and tonally, given the weight of the case on his group at the moment, this is easily his most dramatic, serious, and bleak cover. All his other covers have either this sort of fun energy, or at least are filled with life in some way. This new one however, well, just like the title implies, means business.

FORMAL BREAKDOWN

The cover depicts Thug and 8 other YSL members awaiting trial in an otherwise empty courtroom. I like that there’s no judge, jury, or audience in sight. It makes the shot much more alluring, adding a sense of dread and desolation. With a case of this magnitude, and with Young Thug’s mere stature in popular music, he knows that we’re watching.

Thug as the obvious subject of the cover, is positioned just above centre. There are lots of beautiful lines of direction here, adding some great motion to the shot. Following the red arrows, we have a strong perspective leading our eyes right to Thug’s concerned gaze. Compositionally, it’s usually better to place something right above centre rather than perfect centre, as it creates a bit more visual tension and interest overall.

With a shot by Garfield Larmond, Thug has been photoshopped in, but pretty convincingly if you ask me. Other than this, there’s no graphic intervention here, no typography and no parental advisory sticker. They clearly wanted the image to speak for itself with zero interruption from anything potentially unnecessary. This was a good decision, as it really does reflect the sheer gravity of the situation he’s currently in.

With the buzz BUSINESS IS BUSINESS created, this album probably has the highest chance of being the first rap album of 2023 to go #1.

How do you guys feel about the cover and album? As always, sound off below!

Welcome back to Short Cuts, where recently I’ve been on a few different things, some same old stuff, some new music, mostly nothing though!!!

Why Has 2023 Been Such a Slow Release Year?

Coming to write this next update letter, I’m totally drawing a blank on what I’ve really been listening to this year and lately in general. Every time I open Apple Music, I end up just picking some indie playlist (“indie + chill”, “Indie Pop”, etc.) and skipping through tracks here and there, maybe adding a few. This or I’ll tap the “My Station” Radio feature that just plays stuff it knows I already like. When thinking about what came out this year, I couldn’t even name 5 big great albums. You’ll see when we get to my mid-year favourites, a lot of it fucking came out in 2022!!! Frustrating for sure.

There’s also been no #1 rap song or album this year I guess? Which objectively given the size of the genre is just weird.

It’s not like nothing worthwhile has come out, we’ve gotten the Kali Uchis record, 6LACK, boygenius, Jesus Piece, Jessie Ware, among others, but nothing has really stuck with me that much. I was so excited for the 6LACK album, not having had an album from him in 5 years, but I never go back to that one. Same thing with the boygenius, I never ever go back to that album (even though I’m going to see them in the fall).

More Metallica & Slayer

REGARDLESS—with the release of Metallica’s newest record, 72 Seasons, its caused me to fall back in love with their catalog, namely Death Magnetic (a personal top 3) and Master of Puppets (obviously). This is my favourite album of 2023 so far, and nothings really come close to the replay value.

It’s been a mainstay in the gym lately, the title track intro, “Shadows Follow”, and “Sleepwalk My Life Away” being highlights. I’ve also recently got into $uicideBoy$, and am slowly making my way into their albums, great gym music too.

Slayer has been in constant rotation too, which they always kinda are, my favourites lately being God Hates Us All, Reign In Blood, and Divine Intervention.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Kenny Mason, he’s easily my favourite rapper of the new and current generation. I think him, Denzel Curry, and JID will carry the torch forward in the genre as it ages more and more.

The new Teskey Brothers album, The Winding Way is beautiful, breezy, and easy on the ears. They’re one of my favourite groups in recent years, with incredibly soulful indie music, they don’t have one album I don’t like. I made some concept merch for them the other day too—

Favourite Albums of 2023 So Far…

• 72 Seasons, Metallica (2023)

• SOS, SZA (2022)

• Her Loss, Drake & 21 Savage (2022)

Favourite Songs of 2023 So Far…

• Chemical, Post Malone (2023)

• Nobody Gets Me, SZA (2022)

• Middle of the Ocean, Drake (2022)

• Search & Rescue, Drake (2023)

• AVATAR, Kenny Mason (2023)

• 72 Seasons, Metallica (2023)

Look you guys, I’m pretty unenthused about this year in releases, but I guess I’m hopeful that the latter half of the year will pick up steam? I’ve literally been way more into streaming series like Silo, Jack Ryan, and Reacher, than I have for what’s been coming out musically. That’s weird and new !!!

Again, there have been quality records, I did enjoy the Paramore album earlier this year (cover review below).

The new Ty Dolla Sign single is super fun and different for him, and I’m probably most excited for the new Post Malone album, AUSTIN. But other than that, not much has really stuck with me this year, and as someone who deeply engulfs himself in the industry and music space in general, I’m sad about it.

PLEASE recommend me what you’ve been listening to this year, I still have a lot on my list to get around to, but I wanna hear from the readers! So please, sound off below.

Durk’s career renaissance has been one of the biggest in recent memory, and despite his music not fully following suit, this new cover of his shows some artistic evolution.

The Album Cover

Almost Healed is Lil Durk’s eighth studio album, and his career-long visual output has been choppy at best.

When placing this new cover in context, it’s easily his best.

The first two are truly atrocious and completely frozen in their time period. STTS3 from 2018 picks up the slack a bit, I do like this style of rap cover if I’m honest. It’s super simple and dark, and most times compliments the music on the record. His 2020’s visual run is not the best. Despite the nice floating head treatment, JCYW2 ends up looking like a cheap early Instagram filter, and 7220’s extremely lo-res baby photo looks so rushed. There are so many ways to upscale a lo-res photo, ways that even add visual interest in the process. Print it out and scan it back in a few times, add some tasteful grain, etc.

All of those gripes aside, the Almost Healed cover stands out regardless of his past covers’ inconsistent quality.

Thematically, this photo shows a pained and broken Durk, someone who has lost many friends in this life, and hopes to grieve those losses. It ties in with the title and shows that he’s hopefully on his way to a more whole self, looking to heal those scars that this dangerous and violent lifestyle left him.

The cover was shot by Nabil Elderkin, a veteran photographer in the space. His credit list is absolutely stacked, having shot for Kanye, the Weeknd, Bon Iver and Frank Ocean, just to name a few.

Nabil’s photo here for Durk is crazy technically sound, it’s really some great work. If you look very closely, you’ll see the extremely subtle range in depth of field from just his neck and chest area up to the eyes. The eyes and face being in perfect tack-sharp focus, as the main focal point, and his chest being ever so slightly blurry. It’s superbly done on the Nabil’s part, and really draws you in to this intimate and wounded shot.

The choice to have the photo on a white backdrop was great, as it strips back the setting, bringing even more centre focus on Durk’s obstructed expression. Even though we do just see his blood-filled eye, it manages to still be such an expressive portrait, which is even more of a testament to the quality Nabil can pull from his subjects.

Assuming it wasn’t practically done, “ALMOST HEALED” written out in blood across his bandage was a great creative decision on the designer’s part. His name is written out in the same way across his neck bandage, and I’m honestly so glad this is how they rendered the type. For me, it was either doing the type this way, or having none at all.

I do wish the parental sticker was bigger though. I’ve come around on them as a whole, and now loving Griselda’s visual language so much, I wish more artists would recognise their potential as a graphic addition rather than a box to tick.

Now, listening to the album is a whole separate thing. I’m mixed on it, leaning positive as of now, but I have seen some slightly underwhelming reviews across the internet so far. This cover seems to fit the themes of an uplifting track like All My Life (feat. J. Cole), but it seems to stray from those vibes pretty quickly, and devolves back into the violent street stories that he is apparently trying to heal from.

Similarities to Slime Season 4

I’ve seen some people comparing this cover to Slime Season 4 by Young Thug. The colour palette is almost identical, the composition is extremely similar, and of course the bloody bandages paired with the bloody eye focal point is pretty familiar. While it may have been an inspiration, I don’t think this is any kind of rip off. Having a close-up shoulder height portrait is nothing new for album covers, and this composition simply works best for Durk’s get-up.

How are you guys feeling about the cover? It’s definitely Lil Durk’s most professional and seemingly high budget one so far, and feels like it’s taken the most care in execution. Let me know in the comments!

A Post Malone album cover announcement has always been special, but this time, it feels a bit different.

The Album Cover

AUSTIN is Post Malone’s fifth studio album, and will be released July 28, 2023. As of writing this, the album, tour, and cover were all announced the other day, so this review is hot off the presses.

Depicted is a shirtless, blue jeaned Post Malone with his feet dangling in a private pool. The setting looks like one of his homes presumably, and it all looks very expensive.

The only graphic intervention on the cover is the construction yellow sticker in the bottom left, which contains the album title, his name, a silhouette of a Ford Raptor, and the album’s UPC. I’m not sure of the Raptor’s significance beyond being in the background of the shot, maybe it’s got more importance than just the iconography. I confirmed with PLAYLAB on Instagram, that the version with the yellow sticker is the official, as the plain photo has been posted a few times online.

update from editor Sam: the album has been added to Apple Music, and contrary to what PLAYLAB told me, for some reason, it does not show the yellow sticker. interesting.

Everything was done by PLAYLAB, INC., a Los Angeles-based creative studio founded in 2009. They’ve worked on Virgil Abloh’s “ARTWORK” catalog-book, Drake’s Scorpion retail pop-up, along with Post’s last album, 2022’s Twelve Carat Toothache.

PLAYLAB has some great work, and they’re clearly a very imaginative studio, but yeah, I’m honestly not too into this cover as of now. It doesn’t stack up to any of his first three album covers, not even a little bit, but honestly, Post may be wanting to distance himself from that more high production, high budget aesthetic that ruled his early career. Perhaps he feels it masked who he’s really trying to show himself to be.

I associate Post Malone with those dark Bryan Rivera/Travis Brothers era graphics so heavily that these new ones feel weird and uncanny. Boy, do I not envy these guys for having to take the creative reigns off of Studio Pending, can you imagine following them up on an undertaking like this? Hats off to PLAYLAB INC., and I sincerely mean that.

Even when looking at the peripherals like tour posters, comparing the two eras is just unfair. We went from the left to the right.

I know nothing lasts forever and things have to change, I fully get that, his music is changing too, and I’ve loved everything so far. This just doesn’t feel like the right move. It’s like some weird industry switch was flipped on him because there was a time in 2018-19 where if he so much as dropped a song, the world stopped and listened. Now, I don’t know why, but things don’t seem to be connecting to the masses nearly as much as they used to. I don’t know why, but it makes me sad!

When considering his numbers drop off, never ever forget this graphic.

As far as the actual photo of Post, it looks like it was shot on iPhone, which paired with the whole “government name self-titled album” thing, leads to us getting a “real” album, something maybe more personal. There’s nothing wrong with shooting on iPhone, obviously, we’ve gotten to a place where when edited, you can barely tell the difference between it and a proper DSLR. It’s just something to note with an artist of this scale.

Post may have just wanted this more raw feeling, which funny enough is very similar to Jack Harlow’s recent project, Jackman. 50% of you rated that cover “meh” by the way lol. Government first name, no typography, no graphics, just an uninterrupted full-frame photo of the (shirtless) artist. Now realising how weird it is that they’re both shirtless, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this yet.

Final Thoughts

Look, I don’t know what happened behind the scenes, but I really wish they’d stuck with Studio Pending, as I wholeheartedly believe they would've come up with a more effecting and engaging way to represent this more stripped back approach to Posty’s career. I’ve never seen a miss from them, and their output was and continues to be foundational to who I am as a maker and designer. I think this current AUSTIN rollout is kinda lazy thus far, a bit goofy, and left so much on the table in terms of creativity and exploration.

Again, I have to emphatically reiterate, when you don’t like the visuals of something, the designers and creative team are not always to blame. The artist will sometimes just have a vision and want to stick to it, leading the creatives to follow suit, whether they like it or not. I think that’s probably what happened here, and hey, whatever. These things happen. Regardless of the extremely lacklustre visuals so far, I’m loving the singles we have, and am highly anticipating the rest of the album.

Harlow is back after dipping out for a little bit, and trust me, you’re gonna wanna hear this.

The Album Cover

Kamikaze, Her Loss, hopefully Chance the Rapper’s next release—I love a good, “I heard you,” album. An artist tries something new, or just falls into a sort of lull of mediocrity, the listeners make their voices heard, the artist goes back to the drawing board. After the abysmal reception to Come Home The Kids Miss You, Jack Harlow’s huge 2022 album, he definitely heard the people. He basically went away for a while after a quick tour (that I went to), and did a surprise return with Jackman.

Jack’s back with a more focused, no-frills, no features record who’s stripped back cover perfectly matches its vibe.

Looking at the shot itself, the dusty old basketball hoop, the unkempt landscape (and unkempt Harlow), all lead to this more raw, direct, and homegrown feel. Come Home was incredibly polished as far as big rap albums go, and was Jack’s stamp on the industry, it just didn’t land so well. I personally love the album, it was one of my most played of last year, but it was universally panned. Whether that criticism was justified, or Jack was just the perfect dartboard for everyone’s boiled over frustration with the state of pop rap, I don’t know.

Looking down the rustic backdrop of a Louisville alleyway, we get some great lines of perspective here.

The red arrows show us the natural perspective of the road that leads into the background, but also perfectly shoots up to Jack’s fed up and determined expression, the centrepiece of the cover.

There’s this overwhelming greenish tint to the shot, which makes it feel like film photography. I can’t be sure, but lots of Wyatt’s photos appear this way, so it’s a solid assumption.

The possibly intentional compositional inclusion of the trash bins to the right may have been a jab at critics and internet memers alike, almost an alley-oop to the jokes he knows they’ll make.

It’s just Jack here, as the title implies, and this ties back to a great line of his on “Churchill Downs”, the big Drake collab from Come Home—

Genius breaks down the line:

The bar here is a play on the phrase ‘you don’t know jack’, a colloquial meaning ‘to not know anything’. Here Jack uses a double entendre to assert that ‘everybody’ doesn’t know ‘jack’, but they also don’t know ‘Jack’ himself.

It is also worth noting that the lyrics ‘Jack, man’ is also a play on his government name ‘Jackman’. In evoking his extended name in the line about not knowing ‘Jack’, Harlow further extrapolates upon the established idea that ‘everybody’ does not know him on such a personal level.

On this album and its cover though, we finally do get to know him a little more.

Given where my personal visual tastes have taken me lately, and me fully coming around on (and often preferring) no-typography photo covers, I’m loving this one. It’s great, it fits the album better than any real art-directed studio shot ever could. Jack’s trying to dig deeper here, reveal what he’s thinking and feeling about his race, the company he keeps, the industry/culture at large, and his place within it.

The Back Cover/Tracklist

This is effective too, not straying too far at all from the front shot, continuing the same grainy and filter-heavy aesthetic. The tracklist is written out in Helvetica Black Extended, a typeface used on various peripherals from Come Home.

Featured is a shot of a massive fallen tree crushing a sporty looking sedan in the neighbourhood. Now, this could’ve been an entirely serendipitous moment that they caught on shoot day and thought, “hm yeah, this could be cool.” OR, this was actually in the budget, and they put this together themselves as a visual metaphor for leaving Come Home The Kids Miss You in the past and moving forward.

Either way, its safe to say—Jack Harlow came home.

Introducing Short Cuts, a new series here on GLASSES where periodically I’ll be sharing what I’ve been listening to lately along with some great cover art I’ve come across.

Indie Pop

In this current climate of 35 track albums and 20 track albums with an entire new 20 track album tacked onto the backside in the guise of a “deluxe edition”, there are few things I love more than a nice and brisk EP. There’s this whole world of indie pop and rock where EPs run the world, and I’m stuck there right now.

These EPs and singles from Hannah Jadagu (album out May 19), spill tab, NewDad, and Wallice are all so sweet and easy to listen to, I can’t get enough. One of my favorite part about artists like this is that whatever auto plays afterwards is always lovely and add-to-library-able.

This is anytime music. Wake up, eat breakfast with it, do your work with it quiet or loud, walk to get a coffee with it, its always there and perfectly fitting for most times and moods.

The cover art for this kinda stuff is most times really pleasant too, which is of course a plus over here. More often than not, it’s just a photo of the artist or group, way less often it’ll be some experimental collage-like analog piece. I’ve come along on solely photography-based cover art. I used to be a typography stickler, but I’ve definitely eased up. Also—my god look at that Banshee artwork, I wish I did that so bad.

90s Hip-Hop

Hip-hop was one of my first musical loves, as it can be for a lot of young people, and these golden age classics are what you tend to start out on.

In terms of the older guys, I was into Jay, Biggie, some Eminem, and some Tribe, but always had these big weird gaps. Recently I’ve got more into Nas’ discography, of course having loved Illmatic, but now hearing more It Was Written and God’s Son. Mobb Deep though is really where I’ve found some footing, and they’ve made me look more into this scene of more hardcore East Coast hip-hop like Redman and Wu-Tang.

Since this wave, I picked up It Was Written, Illmatic, all of Jay’ early work to The Black Album, all of Eminem’s early albums, Hell On Earth, The Infamous, and a few more all on CD. I always recommend buying old CDs, as they can be incredibly cheap if you get a lower quality version.

Thanks for reading the first issue of Short Cuts, I’m really excited for this little series, and I hope you guys stick around for the ride!

We’ve had a couple weeks to digest the new tracks and visuals from Tyler, The Creator’s latest expansion pack, and lemme tell you…

The Album Cover

The Estate Sale is a collection of tracks that didn’t make the original standard version of CMIYGL, Tyler’s killer 2021 album. Before we really talk about this new cover, we should quickly discuss the standard edition.

CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

I adore this album cover, in a year of Donda’s and CLB’s, it was so great to see Tyler continue to commit to great visuals to accompany his music. This one’s incredibly minimal, with a pure white background, and a really vintage passport of Tyler dead-centre. In different release contexts, the passport card’s colour would change. Different streaming services have different colours, as well as the physical releases. This is so fun, as it not only creates natural incentive to seek out those physicals to add to your collection, but it makes your copy feel that much more unique.

The immediate visual comparison that comes to mind is Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, from 1995.

Fans speculated that Tyler was influenced by ODB here, but he actually put the rumour to bed on Twitter early on.

The Estate Sale

Onto The Estate Sale cover, unsurprisingly, this cover is also absolutely nuts and done entirely without error. We’ve seen this image before during the original release run, but this time it's re-packaged and has a new typographic title element.

The cover was done by Gregory Ferrand, an American painter and artist, whose paintings “explore the disconnection and alienation we often feel despite (and sometimes because of) the close proximity in which we live to one and other.”1

Bob Flynn on Twitter rightfully states—

“I think it's important to highlight musicians and artists who continue to hire and pay visual artists to illustrate and design for them.”

Tyler has a history of hiring high level creatives to make covers and alternate covers (like this one) for him, which we love to see.

I like that this new expanded edition literally “expands” the feel of the cover, by giving this very wide, almost fish-eye shot of Tyler from below, standing in the vast scenery. Compared to the conservative feel of the standard edition, this one feels more sprawling and adventurous, like we hit the zoom out button and can see so much more now.

Texturally, the cover is smooth, as Ferrand’s perception of lighting and shadow are immaculate, but he retains the painterly qualities you’d want from a piece like this. In certain areas, like the clouds and Tyler’s bright blue sweater, you can actually see the grain of the canvas itself, which is a great little detail.

The angle they chose for Tyler to be shown at does wonders for the composition of the cover, as it creates so much movement. It’s got similar formal qualities to the recent 6LACK cover, with a strong triangle shape being created by Tyler’s stance and form.

It leads our eyes perfectly up the page to Tyler’s mysterious gaze, which is then peering over to the left, where our title typography lands. The type is inspired by vintage luggage tags and printed media from the 20th century, with its eccentric script font and coloured stamp.

Overall, I’m so happy to see Tyler continuing to take extreme care with each of his visual releases, as he’s easily one of the more influential characters we have in music today. Hopefully his careful hand is studied and iterated upon for years to come, as newer generations of artists come to light, following in his footsteps.

6LACK’s almost five year hiatus is coming to a close, as we’re presented with one of the most well executed covers of the year so far.

The Album Cover

Since I Have A Lover is 6LACK’s third studio album. It’s been five years since his last album, 2018’s East Atlanta Love Letter. I’ve been a huge fan of his since he really came onto the scene with “PRBLMS” in 2016, following a similar blueprint set by contemporaries Drake, Bryson Tiller, and PARTYNEXTDOOR.

Placing his new album cover in context of his prior releases, we see some small trends.

Each cover is photographic, and features 6LACK himself, front and centre. These are really the only visual trends we have, as his discography isn’t that expansive yet. SIHAL is the first cover of his to not feature any other subject, with East Atlanta Love Letter showing him holding his new child, and FREE 6LACK having him next to a fucking 700 pound grizzly bear. The new cover is also the first to not have any typography anywhere, whereas the first two both have the album’s titles.

The album cover was shot by Daniel Prakopcyk, a photographer who has worked with the likes of SZA, Bruno Mars, Polo G, The Kid Laroi, Noah Cyrus, and many more.

The vast composition here may be the selling point for the cover. 6LACK lands just off-centre, toward the bottom of the frame, but the shape of his body and arms create stark directional lines that lead our eyes up and out of the frame.

The album cover features 6LACK standing shirtless in a natural environment, enveloped by the massive sky all around him. As mentioned earlier, this is the first cover to not feature another subject other than himself, so it may be an even more personal reflection of the singer, something of a statement record.

Colour-wise, we’re immediately blasted with this hazy purple sky that fills about three quarters of the frame. The cloudy sky then creates this lovely fluid gradient made up of all these varying shades of purple. It fits so well with what I think of when it comes to 6LACK’s moody blend of confessional trap and hip-hop infused R&B. His bandana even appears to match the purple sky. The singles so far have gone well with this mood too, most notably the title track.

On the topic of the title track and lead single, let’s discuss this incredible cover art. Shot by Inari Briana, with creative direction by Adrian Martinez, this cover is atmospheric, textural, and practically impressive.

Here we see 6LACK again, this time suspended in mid-air, floating above a natural patch of green grass and foliage among an otherwise suburban backdrop. It’s almost like he’s coming out of some sort of grass-portal, or maybe falling into it.

One of the easiest ways to tell if a creative team/label is taking an album rollout seriously is the single art. It is waayyyyy too often entirely overlooked in place of something that could just be posted on Insta as an outfit pic. They went above and beyond here, which is so welcomed and refreshing to see.

Similarly to the main cover, the composition is sprawling and wide open, with plenty of room to let the piece breathe. He is floating just off-centre, which is another compositional element borrowed from the main cover, and much more visually interesting than a dead-centre placement. It creates visual tension and ultimately more motion across the page.

The washed out orange and pink sunset in the background is so beautiful, and without it draping over everything in sight, the shot might feel apocalyptic.

Onto the merch, which took me some coming around to, but I do like it.

Only a few pieces have seen the light of day as of writing this, but they’re very fitting of what we’ve seen so far of the rollout. It may have been too obvious and maybe un-wearable to do a purple tee, so they’ve gone with a washed black and cream palette. The design work was done by Luke Fenstemaker, a graphic designer working at Sturdy, a visual agency in Los Angeles.

I think he did a great job with the content provided, 6LACK’s merch has always been quite understated and subtle, almost reading more like lifestyle clothing than merchandise. My favourite is the first black tee on the left, I love the type breakdown of the album’s details.

Side note—Luke did all the merch and vinyl packaging design, and Peach helped out on the CD packaging.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Really great work here, I’m so happy with this run for 6LACK. It’s clear that a lot of care was taken from the initial art direction all the way down to the execution of each part. A nice and concise collection of cohesive bits that are all visually interesting in their own ways, and come together nicely to great effect.

That change took a lot of iteration and changes, there was even a version where I made the background into one of those green cutting mats you see in design studios. Nothing felt right, even the white background mentioned earlier. I felt like I had to leave it, just due to the fact that the Paramore review had to drop, and was already late.

Well. I’ve done yet more R&D. I have hopefully landed on something that feels like a nice middle ground between the two. I love having a picture of the artist, but also need a good presence of the album cover, because it is an album cover review after all. Also, just dropping the cover into the frame of the white square was boring, and I wanted to do more designing than that for each entry.

Behold, the new title card for GLASSES. I hope you’re into it, I feel it has more personality than the second iteration, and again, merges the two in a graphically interesting way. It’s a dynamic design system, as the colour behind the album changes depending on its palette, and the artist photo changes too of course.

Here’s to this new iteration sticking around!!! I think it’s nice, and here’s a little celebration of the first visual era—

and then the refinement/longest visual era—

To a bright future of GLASSES :) Thanks for sticking around while I figure out the identity of this new thing!!!

Paramore’s six year hiatus is over, and they sound better than ever. This album cover however…

GLASSES refresh! I was doing a lot of thinking about this newsletter recently, namely its function and purpose. The main goal is discussing/reviewing these album covers, and the little title cards I make for each have not communicated that at all til now. Structurally, they felt too cookie-cutter-publication, like I was doing a feature or interview with the artist, and not dissecting their album cover. In this new iteration, the focus is now fully on the cover in question.

I made soooo many changes and iterations to this little graphic to get here, and while I do love the covers from the past and their dynamic colours and photos, I think this new version is more concise and holds more meaning as to the function of this publication. I hope you like it!

The Album Cover

This Is Why is Paramore’s sixth studio album. So much has happened since the release of their 2017 album, After Laughter. Without getting into it too much, there’s been a couple lineup changes, and Hayley Williams even released a few solo projects since then (they’re super good, check them out).

Viewing the cover in context, there aren’t really any visual trends over their discography.

My teen years were basically soundtracked by each Paramore release, as it was my sister’s favourite band at the time, constantly having them playing on the home stereo. Their early covers are pretty much of the time, with Riot! being their best in my opinion. It’s extremely loud and expressive, like most of the music on the album.

This Is Why almost has a similar palette to Brand New Eyes, with the focus on cream and earthy tones. The band’s 2013 self-titled release is the only other cover to feature the band itself (even being changed later on to just Hayley), but other than that, the new one basically stands alone visually.

The Poor Typographic Decision

The cover for this new record is a full frame photo of the trio, all with their faces pressed up against some sort of rained on glass pane. The bands name and album title is cleanly written in a cream coloured Futura Bold, directly across the middle. If you’ve ever read any of these newsletters or even seen any designs of my own, you know how much I’m obsessed with type. The use of it here though? Pretty unnecessary and harmful to the overall concept and illusion.

Speaking with Jack McArdle from Studio AAA, he convinced me that the type here does nothing for the design, and would’ve looked much better without. When asking him what typography is warranted on an album cover, he said:

“To me, it’s when it doesn’t dilute the idea.”

Jack argues that initially, it would look like the band are pressed up against the glass in your phone’s screen, or even trapped inside the packaging of the physical release.

“The text breaks the fourth wall, now it’s not believable. If you want text on it, put it on the sticker of the physicals. And for digital, great news—the text is already below it on the streaming services.”

We agreed that if they wanted to use type like this, to do it practically! Use some Letraset on the actual glass, or write it in window paint, something other than this. Isolated, the type itself is well done, with the design being done by FISK Projects.

The photography by Zachary Gray is extremely effective! The shoots he did with the band looked really fun and really capture the energy of the group.

I really do love the range of shots here, each of these with the potential to be their own special edition album cover.

The Design Peripherals

Luckily, one of the photos from these shoots was used for a single cover.

Again, I think the big typography is unnecessary here, as it doesn’t add much of anything to the composition. I do like the inclusion of the Atlantic logo at the bottom, though. I wish more groups and artists did that.

Looking at more physical pieces from their online store, I do, however, like these album posters. The type works here, going at the top and bottom, as it doesn’t distract from anything going on below.

I’m a sucker for a nice cassette release, and this one is gorgeous. Simple and clean, this is another great implementation of the album type, as again, it doesn’t interfere with the visual. The supplementary use of red everywhere is lovely too, I picked up the CD, and it’s used in small little corners of the packaging.

The initial merch is pretty basic, as it usually is in the first little capsule, so hopefully we get some more interesting stuff down the line on tour. I love the cream and black pairing though, really nice.

The tour posters are similarly done, very simply designed. I’m glad to see the consistent use of Futura Bold, but this is expected coming from top dogs like FISK.

Overall, pretty great collection of visuals for one of Paramore’s better releases, if not their best. Again, the cover would’ve been more effective without the type, but alas. I’d love to know what you think of the shot, and if you also grew up on Paramore!