Selected Scenes from the End of the World redesign

Black vinyl record with a cover featuring a stylized, halftone image of a sculpture of a woman with her arms raised, and a small portrait of a woman on the label.
Open book with black and white illustration of a girl with long hair and a dress, titled 'Dirt or Treat'. Surrounding books with text and images, some featuring gothic decoration and scenes with people.
Black vinyl record partially pulled out from a black album cover with white ornate corner designs, featuring song titles and track listing in light blue text on the back cover.

About the album

The album I chose to redesign as apart of a university re-packaging module is Selected Scenes from the End of the World by London After Midnight. It is a gothic rock album released in 1991. I chose to redesign this vinyl record as the current covers are really weak, especially in contrast with the meaning of the songs. The typography is not effective and is not really representative of the gothic rock genre, along with the imagery. The design could be elevated to be more representative of the genre and the album itself.​ Along with the vinyl record cover and inner sleeve, I designed a lyric book, cassette tape, and tour poster.

Typography

In an attempt to move away from cliche blackletter typefaces, I used Blackbeard. This typeface provides an expression of decay and distress without relying on predictable typefaces that are used for albums of this genre. Blackletter is only used for the titles of the songs in the lyric book in order to create a sense of hierarchy through typographic differentiation between the title and the lyrics. 

Colour

Cool tones overall are more melancholic and evoke a sense of mystery. They are also more associated with other worldliness, such as ghosts, dreamlike states, and moonlit landscapes, all of which are also associated with the goth subculture and this album.

Imagery

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss is a Neo Classical statue of lovers Cupid and Psyche. It follows the story of Psyche being put into deep, death like sleep by Venus, who was jealous of her beauty. Cupid finds her like this, and revives her with a kiss. Being one of the most iconic representations of romantic tragedy mixed with death and desire, I found it appropriate to use for this album.​ I added an engraved texture to remove the smoothness of the actual statue. The songs on the album are far from being about perfect love and an ideal world, so I wanted to get rid of the perfect look of the statue to relate to this.

​Different paintings that relate to the the songs meanings are used inside the lyric book. These are given the same treatment as the image on the front cover. The lyric book is printed on blue paper and uses only black ink.

Collage featuring multiple images of a classical sculpture of a woman with one arm over her head, in various artistic styles and color filters, with the text "Selected Scenes from the End of the World" present in some images.

Front cover experimentation

Collection of images showing album covers and tracklists for a vinyl record titled "This Paradise The Black Cat Revenge Spider and the Fly Your Best Nightmare Sacrifice Claire's Horrors Inamourada Trick or Treat Demon." The covers feature dark backgrounds with white or light-colored text, including images of hands and a person aiming a bow and arrow.

Back cover experimentation

Series design

In order to create a cohesive series, I used the same colours throughout my deliverables. The cassette tape also aligns with the vinyl’s cover, acting like a puzzle piece. The accompanying lyric book is printed on blue paper and only uses black as it is more interesting in terms of materiality. The tour poster uses the same engraved texture as the image of Cupid and Pysche.

Tour posters and flyers for a European concert series titled "After Midnight" featuring a black and white illustration of a horse and a woman. The posters list dates and locations of the tour.

All deliverables