Black Celebration
Vinyl + Liner Notes
Album cover/liner notes project Depeche Mode's 35th Anniversary album for Black Celebration. I redid the design, color palette, and theme for this album to highlight more of the meaning of romance and darkness portrayed in their industrial sound and emotional lyrics. I was inspired by their use of metal and mechanical tools to create musical sounds so I portrayed construction elements throughout the visuals. Their previous branding system for this album didn't communicate the feel of their music effectively.
This album is filled with dark, alternative sounds paired with emotional and romantic lyrics. That's why I chose the key motifs of construction (e.g. pipes, smoke towers, cranes, blueprints, etc.) and roses to communicate the two dichotomies their listeners will hear with this album. Furthermore, to emphasize the two main feelings of industrial yet emotional, I chose vibrant red, black, dark periwinkle, and grey as the color palette. For the typefaces, the header is a rough, imperfect, and bold san serif with varying weights between stems to represent the lead singer's, Dave Gahan's, deep and strong voice. For the body copy, I chose a classic, softer serif to represent the secondary vocalist, Martin Gore's, delicate and easeful voice. Their two voices paired together is what makes Depeche Mode's vocals unique and interesting and I felt it was only necessary to portray that through their album design as well.
