DIY Album Art, Paper Bags & Office Supplies

DIY Album Art, Paper Bags & Office Supplies

The ‘introduction’ consists of twenty four pages of pure images, no text. Tactile and gritty album covers that have been constructed in the vein of the handmade and homemade.  DIY Album Art pays homage to the artistry of musicians working in the early nineties, where the ethos of the punk-rock scene lent itself to musicians creating their own album covers from all sorts of found materials, in various traditional and non-traditional techniques.

The text in the book contains playful, diary-like accounts of how these processes were implemented to create album covers at a limited cost with maximum aesthetic impact.  The artists reflect on their own resourcefulness; how they established methods of using readily available materials in non-conventional ways.

This book contains excellent examples of ways that students can incorporate traditional and fine art techniques such as lino-printing, etching, collage, wood block, type-writer, collage and photocopy transfer into their design work.  There is a big focus on experimentation as the artists in the book combine existing objects, surfaces and textures and rework them into something new.

DIY Album Art would be a useful resource for students when considering how media, methods and materials can be explored to produce a design related outcome.   This book is also a great resource for teachers when devising projects that encourage the combination of handmade and digital media, traditional and contemporary techniques.