The Creative Corporation Stoke Newington

ABOUT

The concept and production for the cover was created by The Creative Corporation, which was art directed by Dave Stansbie in collaboration with Aubrey Powell from the legendary Hipgnosis design studio, who produced legendary album covers for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Trex during the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s. This was a rare opportunity for us to work with both a music artist and designer we had all admired for many years.

Initially the project was a creative pitch, which five studios were invited into. We were each provided with one track from the album and a potential album title to base our ideas around. David deliberately limited the brief to these basic elements, as he wanted to see what we would all interpret from them. A technique that many music artists from the earlier years often adapted.

This idea was created after listening to the first single. The one thing that really stood out to all of us was the sense of joy and experimentation, a complex combination of many different musical styles and instruments. It was clear that David was working on an album of his choice, one that he was really enjoying; a sense of breaking free from the work he had produced with Pink Floyd. It was this sense of freedom that lead us to concept.

Initially the concept was based around using the beautiful colours, movement and textures of tropical 'Birds of Paradise'. But on reflection David asked us to explore the idea of using Corvidae birds, which is a cosmopolitan family of oscine birds that includes Crows, Ravens, Rooks, Jackdaws, Jays, Choughs and Magpies.

Initially this involved sourcing 100s of images of Corvidae birds, which sounds a simple task, but this was far from the case and lead to the decision to hand-paint a majority of the birds ourselves.

Once this process was underway, we turned our attention to finding the ideal landscape setting. We soon decided North Wales was just what we were looking for; dark and spacious landscape with rich iron-like natural colours. It felt in-keeping with the project that we should call upon a photographer that we had also admired for many years and one that had a strong connection with Pink Floyd. This photographer was Rupert Truman from StormStudios and it soon became apparent that we had found exactly the right person for the job. Rupert spent three days on location in North Wales and unfortunately due to the shots we needed this meant picking the darkest, wettest day we could find. During these three days Rupert took 100s of images, which were eventually shortlisted to around 10 images, which we merged together to create the perfect setting.

By the time the landscape was ready the birds had been perfected we set about bringing it all together, which involved modelling a 3D gold cage, set in the landscape. The end piece sits somewhere between a photograph and an oil painting, a type of 'dark and twisted Turner landscape'.

AWARDS

Best Album cover of 2015 at the Art Vinyl Awards

MADEIT CREDITS

Annual 2016 ShortlistDavid Gilmour album coverGraphic Project featured: on 12th January 2016

David Gilmour album cover

*
*
*
*
*

Comments