Secret 7 artwork by Josiah Craven

Link: Josiah Craven
Link: Secret 7

This year's outstanding Secret 7 project featured contributions from Yoko Ono, Peter Blake, David Shrigley, Paul Smith and Erik Spiekermann alongside Plastic Circles favourites including Give Up Art, Optigram, La Boca and HORT. However, the initiative has also historically acted as a great showcase of upcoming talent.

One such fresh creative is Josiah Craven - a student on Leeds College of Art's BA (Hons) Graphic Design course - who managed to sneak seven of his artworks included within Secret 7's recent exhibition at Somerset House. That's one for every included track. Working as a set while also reflecting qualities particular to the individual records, his 7" single designs couple type-based constructions with art-directed photographic elements to culminate in a series of contemporary music/design artefacts. Sold off in aid of the Nordoff Robbins charity, the set has since been split but have been collected here for posterity.

Jlin - Dark Energy artwork by Spencer Shakespeare and Fabian Harb

Link: Planet Mu
Link: Knives
Link: Dinamo

With A&R and art direction by Spencer Shakespeare's and Jamie 'Kuedo' Teasdale's KNIVES imprint/creative agency (although unleashed via the always forward-thinking Planet Mu), Jlin's Dark Energy long-player takes both footwork and record artwork seriously. The finished package also benefits from sizeable input from Fabian Harb of, type foundry, Dinamo and effectively will whet appetites for what's to come from a new type of collaborative practice. 

As Teasdale notes in an interview with FACT: 

"From the outset, we both knew that the label had to offer something individual in terms of validating its existence. Due to our collective interests and backgrounds, we also knew that this would somehow encompass visual art, graphic design and a collaborative working process."

'Cargaa 1 EP' by HelloMe

Link: HelloMe 
Link: Warp 

The first of three Cargaa EPs that represents emerging Lisbon talent is released by Warp next week. Available as as a 12" and download, artwork comes courtesy of Berlin's HelloMe: furthering - as the bottom images suggest - the palette and clean aesthetic of their refresh of Warp's website. Although this time, coupling that Designers Republic 2.0 style with some more expressively daubed detailing.

Michael and Mattis - 'Hoes Before Bros' artwork by Cordova-Canillas

Link: Cordova-Canillas
Link: Hivern Discs

Debut Michael and Mattis EP for the Hivern label comes with a sleeve art directed by Barcelona's Cordova-Canillas. A great project in its own right but even more impressive when you see how this artwork for the NewYork/Oslo duo is within the context of a broad yet cohesive portfolio that also includes some great editorial, digital and photography work.

Luke Vibert's Nuggets Vol. 3 by Non-Format

Link: Non-Format
Link: Lo Recordings

Boasting rare oddities from the Bruton Music label, Luke Vibert's third journey through the archives of lost synth-heavy library music is graced with some well crafted artwork from Non-Format.

Now up on their updated website (alongside their rightly lauded design for Black Devil Disco Club's Black Moon White Sun album), Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss have offered up the depiction of a curious object that simultaneously feels both modern and antique. The diagonals of its cryptic markings are carried through on the release's text with track titles and credits dropped into a multi-directional grid that similarly plays with another dichotomy: that of order and chaos.

 

U2 - 'Ordinary Love' artwork by Oliver Jeffers

Link: Oliver Jeffers
Link: Record Store Day

It's probably not since Michael Cina's work for Matthew Dear that a sleeve with a painted portrait has been featured here. And this one, by Ireland's Oliver Jeffers, already had me overcoming my own indifference to U2 when it was released last week as a limited 10" vinyl pressing for Record Store Day. A song featured in the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, it suddenly has more resonance given the passing of its iconic subject.

For The Record #6: Kate Moross

Link: Kate Moross
Link: Studio Moross
Link: Stiff Records
Link: Design Manchester 13
Link: Paul Gorman's Reasons to be Cheerful book


Ahead of her talk at Design Manchester 13 tomorrow (alongside Malcolm Garrett, Peter Saville and Mark Farrow, no less), Kate Moross selects the Kandinsky-inspired 1977 work by Barney Bubbles for The Damned's Music For Pleasure as her personal favourite sleeve.

"I didn't know what it was when I first found it but I loved it immediately," she says. "Some people will obviously know about Barney Bubbles but I still don't think he's had the recognition that he deserves. Not when you consider the amount of great work he did.

"I've got to know Bubbles' biographer Paul Gorman and he's said that he sees some of him in me. Not necessarily in terms of our styles... but it's a huge compliment."

Kate Moross' own book, Make Your Own Luck, is published by Prestel April 2014.

Manchester Confidential also has a feature on Design Manchester 13.

Thomas Azier work by Ben Roth

Link: Ben Roth
Link: Thomas Azier

A long overdue post featuring work by the Berlin-based Ben Roth for electropop multi-instrumentalist Thomas Azier.

It's a monochrome series that is leading up to an eventual album release that comes complete with a moody aesthetic previously explored through Roth's work for the Vulture label. Roth has also developed another direction through a couple of colour-heavy sleeves for Alan Braxe and Benjamin Diamond that are also worth checking out.

Coma - In Technicolor artwork by Siggi Eggertsson

Link: Siggi Eggertsson
Link: Coma
Link: Kompakt

Mount Kimbie - Cold Spring Fault Less Youth artwork by Leif Podhajsky

Link: Leif Podhajsky
Link: Mount Kimbie
Link: Warp

With that amazing Horrors box set recently unveiled plus an archive of visual material for names like Foals, Bonobo and Tame Impala, Aussie artist Leif Podhajsky's kaleidoscopic view of the world is well established. However his latest imagery for Mount Kimbie's upcoming long-player takes a more restrained graphic, almost mid-century approach yet it simultaneously appears to nod towards Matisse's collage work and, pioneer of the album cover, Alex Steinweiss. So while Podhajsky's more psychedelic offerings will continue to thrill, it's great to see the arrival of this other, cleaner but equally intriguing aesthetic.

The Draughtsman - '1694 EP' artwork by Alex Egan

Link: Alex Egan

Renaissance man or control freak? Whatever, Alex Egan's release as The Draughtsman comes complete with artwork by the producer. Of course, Egan is more than adept at producing tasty music-oriented design with his output gracing labels including Phantasy Sound. However the polymath's double (green) vinyl offering is particularly special.

Evidently a homage to Peter Greenaway's The Draughtman's Contract, its depiction of ordered nature plays against some more haphazard type. With remixes from Roman Flügel, Cosmo Vitelli and Tim Paris, it's available to purchase from Phonica.

DJ Rashad - 'Rollin' artwork by Optigram

Link: Optigram 
Link: Alex Trochut
Link: Hyperdub

Another sleeve from Manuel Sepulveda of Optigram for the Hyperdub label. This time it's a visualisation for an upcoming four track EP by DJ Rashad: a name synonymous with Chicago's footwork sound. Not that this is completely new territory for Sepulveda (he previously designed an album cover for, scene stalwart, Traxman on Planet Mu) but it is representative of Hyperdub's continued diversification.

This one sees the designer creating the sort of dark textures that typified Ikonika's 2010 album while also making use of a bold typeface created by Alex Trochut.

Getz/Andy Pain & Z Connection - 'The Wicker Man/Dive Ruv' artwork by Pyramid Studio

Link: Pyramid Studio

12" artwork for, Russian label, Interactive Music by Pyramid Studio's João Miguel Chaves. Nice.

Fort Romeau - 'SW9' artwork by Michael Cina

Link: Michael Cina
Link: John Klukas
Link: Ghostly

More beautiful Ghostly/Spectral work from Michael Cina that picks up from the painterly figurative style of his previous Matthew Dear sleeve. Only this time (for the 100% Silk-affiliated Fort Romeau) the paint adds a gauzy texture to a photograph of a woman by John Klukas with further veiling of the image via a more rigid graphic overlay. Cina pairs this with some sophisticated and carefully arranged type on the reverse. Out 11th March.