The Velvet Underground
For this project I created album art for the band The Velvet Underground for a course in typography. The Velvet Underground was a popular American rock band in 1960's and 70's. It was managed by Andy Warhol for a short time, and their 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico was called the "most prophetic rock album ever made" by Rolling Stone in 2003.
Their music had provocative subject matter, was very experimental, leading people to say they integrated rock era music and the avant-garde.
You can listen to their music here.
I started using one typeface, limited sizes and weights, to begin to understand the type hierarchy. I played around with different grids, and when I had explored over 30 different options, I moved to using graphic elements, color, and images.
These are a couple of the designs I was working with. I really liked the texture I had created for the far left composition using tinfoil. I also thought the far right was fairly successful, I had imagined that with such a small contrast in the background and type tones that a difference in treatment, matte vs glossy would give the cover a luxury feel.
Final Design
This is the final design I created. I thought that using an image of the band better represented the time period of the music, and the hazy, posterized image, spoke to their mostly drug induced states of music creation.