The phrase ‘oldie, but goodie’ definitely applies here as this piece comes from early on in my studies in communication design, pre-art college, where, already I was interested in the crossover between music and graphic design.
For a project that ostensibly was an exercise in life-drawing, I took the brief, to produce a still life illustration, and ran with it to create a concept for a 10″ vinyl single sleeve release for the US neo-punk group The Offspring and their popular song Come out & play, a big smash at the time.
In terms of the actual creative, I drew one of my old worn Converse All Star Chuck Taylor boots as a pencil study and then rendered it bolder using fat key lines over watercolour. The notion of a beaten-up old shoe seemed a good visual metaphor for the themes of the track.
The front of the sleeve featured a detail of the famous Chuck Taylor badge, which I adapted to carry the name of the group and the title of the song. The flip-side featured the full illustration of the shoe plus sleeve notes.
I produced an actual sleeve using an old-school mixed media approach that involved paper, acetate sheets, photography, a scanner, and a big Xerox machine. The finishing touch was applying some price stickers obtained from my local independent record shop (since closed).
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Client: Self-led
