Facts about Deep Purple new album cover.

[Wyvern]

Open e-mail from the artist to a fan.

Glad you're a fan, this project was one of the most difficult I have ever worked on as there was a lot of confusion and indecisiveness on the project from the art standpoint.

This caught me off guard as I have worked with DEEP PURPLE now close to 8 years. ABANDON being my first cover with them and my artwork.

The cover drawing is by Tom Swick, it was a color cartoon that Roger Gloversaw in a magazine (New Yorker I think) and thought it was an interesting idea to develop further. My firm submitted about a half dozen concepts Including some when the album had a different title.

When it came down to deciding on the cover Ian liked the cartoon as is, Roger wasn't sold on it and while in Switzerland preparing for the July part of the summer tour me and him worked on another six concepts for the cover
which I liked very much. I think those will see the light of day perhaps as another act's cover they are that good.

Returning from the tour Roger headed down to my design firm, and showed me how he had layout the cartoon that Ian liked for the front cover.

We than worked 8 -9 hour days for about a week or so and designed together the packaging for the new album which includes a 2 disc LP, Two Digipaks (10 and 11 song versions) complete with 16 page booklets different from the CD version. 3 CD JEWELCASES with a 16 page booklet (10,11 songs version and a Japanese version) and a promo poster.

We created 17 pieces of original art (with the origin being the cartoon) That I'm really proud of. The cover though is really all Rogers design, He picked the color, font, title art, and had the cartoon version done as a simple B/W.

For me this was the same as the way they asked me to work on Bananas Roger saw a picture in a news paper with Ian in the far east, Gave it to me along with the picture that their manager Bruce Payne Had taken and asked me to design around it.

The difference this time was that me and Roger worked together as Art directors which was a blast.

We are talking about doing a book project together and will hopefully work on the 2006 Tour Merchandise late next month.

As for the port hole cover I think it was submitted from the German label from a local agency, Roger thought it was the worst and was pissed when that was posted as the final as we were finishing the real cover!

Hope that answers all

Cheers
Ioannis

 

[Hawk]

Cool! This is the guy that made the spectacular "Awaken the Guardian" cover for Fates Warning.

Here is his website:

http://www.dangerousage.com/main.html

I alway's liked his style. He reminds me a bit of Rodger Dean.

 

[Wyvern]

Thanks for the link Hawk, great work indeed. He also made covers for The Flower Kings, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Onward (based on the cover of H.R. Giger for ELP "Brain Salad Surgery")

 

[Hawk]

Thanks for the link Hawk, great work indeed. He also made covers for The Flower Kings, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Onward (based on the cover of H.R. Giger for ELP "Brain Salad Surgery")

Well, Giger is a whole different ball game!! Althought some of his art is rather disturbing to this old guy, I am still facinated by some of his work. I alway's have loved his cover of Celtic Frost's "To Mega Therion"

Here is a great web site with his art!

http://www.giger.com/Home.jsp


Or this one:

http://www.fred-katrin.de/

In German, but you just hjave to click the links.

I supose you already know Giger won an oscar in 1980 for his groundbreaking design in the first "Alien" movie!

 

[Wyvern]

Well, Giger is a whole different ball game!! Althought some of his art is rather disturbing to this old guy, I am still facinated by some of his work. I alway's have loved his cover of Celtic Frost's "To Mega Therion"


I supose you already know Giger won an oscar in 1980 for his groundbreaking design in the first "Alien" movie!

Giger didn't made the cover for CF on comission unlike the one he made for Debbie Harry or Steve Stevens. But a lot of his works had been used in covers: Magma, ELP, Debbie Harry, Steve Stevens, Atrocity, Danzig, Carcass, among others.

He's one of my favorite painters, and also besides Alien he designed the monster in "Species"...plus a lot of weird stuff I recommend overall his book "www HR Giger com 666" on Taschen Books.