Matthew Levinson

Designing record covers

Published on 05/10/08
by matt

With Massive Attack’s “Collected,” we needed to find a symbol that encapsulated or conveyed the emotions and ideals of the band. With it being a “Best of,” a more obvious route would have been to utilise their trademark flame in some way. So instead we thought, a nicer way to approach the cover was to adopt a technique that we’d used before on their other album “Mezzanine:” a collage or composite of different elements, but applied to a new set of images. Working with Nick Knight, we took a still life of roses as the core element and introduced other layers over the top. When you first look at the rose, you see this very beautiful flower, or group of flowers. However on closer inspection, all these other hidden layers are revealed.

Tom Houston talking to Japan’s Ping mag about designing CD covers for Massive Attack, as well as Nick Cave, Gnarls Barkley and others.

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