They described it as ‘art rock’ and ‘psychedelic folk’. I just thought it sounded cool. Pole Shift Survival Group wrote an album with the title ‘About the Sun & How the Seasons Change‘. Yup, a classic, physical CD album. Old-fashioned, I know! Rempe, Marnix, Kathy and Maurice asked me to design the artwork for their CD.
The themes in the songs are strong: repetition, infinity, but also growth. How to visualise that?
Lead singer and writer Rempe told me that he was fascinated by infinite figures like circles, Möbius strips and Klein bottles. By coincidence, during that talk, I was sitting next to Lynn from Big Vissie. She was gathering ideas to start making the music video for the record’s opening song, Real. She was wearing a pair of trousers with a paisley-like pattern, with repeated elements growing bigger and smaller. As if it were a fractal.
… Bingo.
Fractals: visual repetition
A repeating pattern, growing ad infinitum: in mathematics, we call that a fractal. You may have seen them before: complex, colourful patterns that keep on repeating.
For the record’s cover, I made a ‘Julia’ fractal in black, white and red. This yielded a psychedelic effect that the PSSG members loved. It fit the atmosphere of the music very well.
But, this was not just a request for artwork for the CD. It would be packaged with a booklet with all of the songs’ lyrics. And that booklet also needed a design.
In other words: more fractals! I used a generator to create a lot of different types of fractals, in all kinds of colour palettes. Then we matched the images to the songs. The out-there names of some of the fractals ended up inspiring Rempe again, for new lyrics. I can imagine, with terms like ‘strange attractor’, ‘Lyapunov’ and ‘quaternion’.
Grungy fractals
Fractals from my generator ended up being very clean, and very colourful. We aimed for a more ‘lived-in’ style for the album. That’s why I used all kinds of textures and grungy brushes to reduce the images from ‘pristine’ to ‘grungy’.
Can I help you with artwork for your CD or music?
Even if your theme is as abstract and profound as PSSG’s, I can handle it. I’d love to hear (about) your music, and I’ll make you some fitting art. Have a look through the rest of my portfolio to get an idea about my style.