Recording Package: Art Direction & Design for Red Bull Sound Select x Arts & Crafts curated 12” compilation for  Record Store Day. Print and digital collateral.

Role: Art Direction, Graphic Design

Red Bull Sound Select was planning a collaboration with Arts & Crafts records in commemoration of Record Store Day. The two organizations had been working together for some time doing artist development and promotion in Toronto, but had never produced any albums together. This would be the first collaboration of its kind for both.

The album is a non-tradtional compilation in the sense that it doesn’t showcase a single style, time period, or sub-genre. Rather, the album is a collaboration between labels and illustrates two complementary approaches. The visual solution needed to support this spirit and also have a singular identity separate from both the RBSS program and Arts & Crafts’ brand identity.

This collaboration represents a new approach to Arts & Crafts’ usual ways of doing new artist promotion. It embraces the return to tradtion and traditional formats, but presents a group of artists in a current, modern context. The visual solution takes the idea of the reinterpretation of tradition and applies it using fluting from classical stone columns as a starting visual reference. The forms are then simplified, removed from their context, curved, flattened, and set on a flat gradient ground.

We settled on a four point gradient gatefold with insert. The printing was beautifully executed, with double-shot white and subtle spot UV to bring the illustrations off the ground, as well as a reflective silver foil stamp for numbering. The project was available North America wide (150 plus retailers) and sold out on the day of release. Arts & Crafts described it as their biggest collaborative success to date.