Monday 21 Aug 2006
Many creatives cite record covers as the things that first switched them onto design, and the fascination with this canvas can endure the length of a career. Digit investigated the industry, and the threat MP3 poses to CD art.
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<h2>Case study</h2>
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<b>Coldcut:</b> <i>Sound Mirrors</i><BR>
<b>Design:</b> Nigel Peake
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Released in January 2006, Coldcut’s album <i>Sound Mirrors</i> is generally considered to be the band’s most accessible recording yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s middlebrow – and nor is the sleeve art.
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Nigel Peake, 25, designed the sleeve. Irish-born Peake studied architecture at Edinburgh. It’s an unusual background for a graphic designer, but one that gives his work a unique aesthetic. Peake’s professional training has clearly impacted on his work.
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“My work is kind of related to architecture,” he says. “The stuff for Coldcut, for example, is based around the idea of a map – the brief was quite open.”
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Indeed, the front cover image is clearly reminiscent of city life. Rather than blandly show us the simple reality of architecture and planning, Peake has created a topography of urbanism gone wrong.
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Peake has taken modernist architect Le Corbusier’s idea that the house is a “machine for living” to its logical conclusion – the city becomes a giant meta-machine that, against all logic, continues to work.
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Coldcut is not only a well respected band central to Ninja Tune’s success, it is in fact the alter ego of the label’s founders Matt Black and Jonathan Moore, so Peake was working directly for the bosses.
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“I met up with Strictly Kev [Kevin Foakes, Ninja Tune’s designer and art director] and kept in touch with him. I submitted some ideas for Coldcut and my work was evaluated – there were seven other designers.
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“I did the <i>Sound Mirrors</i> album and accompanying singles. I’m about to do the DVD cover and menu pages,” he says.
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“I still do everything by hand – I do use Photoshop to put things together but I still like the notion of hand-crafted things, especially if they end up being mass produced and sitting on the shelves in HMV.” <a href="http://www.secondstreet.co.uk" Target=_blank">www.secondstreet.co.uk</a>
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<div class=inlineimage><img src=](/images/features/1495/Sound Mirrors - album cove.jpg)
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