MUSIC

12.12.13 • VOXMAGAZINE.COM 13

NAPSTER DIDN’T JUST SERVE A blow to the jaw of the music industry; it also condensed album artwork into thumbnail-sized images and made album booklets a distant memory. But designers, such as MU grad and Denver resident Matt Taylor, are adjusting. Creating compelling art pieces by tuning into audience preferences is the cornerstone of creating album art, he says.

In the not-so-distant past, when albums were released, everyone rushed to record stores and picked up a physical copy complete with a 12-page book of glamour shots and lyrics.

Now music comes in a compressed file downloadable straight to any digital device and accessible without even having to put on pants. The idea is to create 3-D art packaging that is not available through a digital download.

Taylor is a Grammy award-winning art director, who has worked with artists such as Thirty Seconds to Mars, My Chemical Romance and Danny Elfman. “I didn’t know I could win Grammys,” Taylor says. His elaborate ideas about packaging for albums in a digital age earned him four nominations and one win for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium in 2007.

Taylor wants to create something exceptional. “Record companies are stuck in an old business model,” Taylor says. This old model is a mere package of CD cases and glossy photos. “My focus is definitely providing the fans with interesting things that are directly related to the music and come from the band and is something you want to keep.”

Taylor’s work is more than an image in a case. The box sets and special packaging that he creates are accompanied by keepsakes such as elaborate books, 7-inch colored vinyl records, masks, laser guns and zoetropes —

devices that produce the illusion of moving images from stills — items not possible in a digital file.

Taylor still does some traditional artwork. Twelve-page booklets in plastic cases aren’t exceptionally popular anymore, though iTunes LP was created to bring back album booklets in digital form. With his innovations in packaging, Taylor has remained successful throughout his career.

Columbia designer Kevin Shults works primarily for bluegrass artists, and as a bluegrass musician himself, he knows the music and audience well.

“Graphic design is about communication,” Shults says. “I concentrate on who the person or band is and how I communicate what the group is and what the project means.”

Another local designer Ellie Tiefenbrun takes a similar approach. “I learn everything I can about a brand,” Tiefenbrun says. “Who the customer is, who they want the customer to be, what seems to be the most compelling about the brand.”

These principles aren’t lost on Taylor either. “I want to get inside (the artists’) head and get the feeling of the record and know where their head is,” Taylor says. For the Stadium Arcadium art, Taylor got a super secret, watermarked copy of the CD to help him. But sometimes, including now as he works on art for The Fray, he begins without hearing the music.

Despite the crunched thumbnail images that make up today’s digital album artwork, there is still something compelling about the images that accompany music. Taylor’s Grammy is the proof. “I hung it around my neck,” Taylor says. He’s joking. It holds a spot in his studio. And much like what he creates, it’s definitely not downloadable.

+ HANNAH REESE

ALBUM ART EVOLUTIONDesigners revamp cover design for a digital age

Grammy award-winning Matt Taylor revamps album artwork for the digital age. Artists he has worked with include Red Hot Chili Peppers and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

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