New Zealand graphic designer and illustrator Anna Taylor strips a live album cover back to its essence, letting photography, colour and a single touch of spot gloss do all the talking.
There is a particular confidence in a cover that does not need to explain itself. The artwork Anna Taylor created for Nadia Reid’s live album, a special Record Store Day release on Chrysalis Records, is exactly that: an image-led design where the only text is Reid’s initials, printed in spot gloss over the photograph so that they appear and disappear depending on how the light hits. It is a restrained, considered choice that trusts both the music and the image entirely.
The photography, shot by elstudiosphotography, provided the foundation. Taylor drew the colour palette directly from those images, letting the tones already present in the photographs shape the overall feel of the design rather than imposing something external onto them.
“Working with imagery this strong means the design’s job is to honour it rather than compete with it,” Taylor says. “The spot gloss initials were a way of putting Nadia’s name on the cover without the cover becoming about the name.”
The collaboration carried personal weight as well as creative stakes. For Taylor, working with Nadia Reid, a New Zealand female musician, mattered. Both artists are working in a creative landscape where that kind of connection, between a designer and a musician who share a context and a culture, produces work with a different quality of attentiveness. The live album format, recorded in the particular atmosphere of a specific moment, called for artwork that felt equally alive and present rather than produced.
The result is a cover that feels immediate and intimate, which is exactly what a live Record Store Day release should feel like.
Anna Taylor is a New Zealand graphic designer and illustrator working mainly in the creative industries. She really doesn’t like sultanas and she loves all things music.
ARTIST LINKS
annstaylor.nz
@anns_taylor_design
Nadia Reid live album, Record Store Day release, Chrysalis Records. Cover design: Anna Taylor Photography: elstudiosphotography. Spot gloss finish on cover.
