Watchtower Blues

In 2008, Peter Saville was reported as saying that Record sleeve art, as a medium was dead. Maybe so in mainstream culture, but there are pockets of people in the creative arts who are still innovating and designing for the record sleeve. This is the sleeve for a 10 inch EP (45rpm) titled Watchtower Blues by The Shooting Stars, a new band described as a western 'n' rockin!

The size of the cover is 270mm square and has been produced by artist and letterpress printer Helen Ingham at Hi-Artz Press (who is also is one of the six band members)  ...and it houses a record in Green Vinyl - very,very cool...

Picture showing front and back covers:

The sleeves have been produced in two colour letterpress (red and green) - yes just two colours! look at the colours, overprinted colour and the tint graduation - pretty impressive stuff.

The sleeve has been produced on our Kapok 500gsm, which is a natural, brown coloured board, very stiff and slightly 'polished' on the surface. The sleeves are folded on one edge and the two other closed edges are sewn in a buff coloured thread:

Helen Ingham is an artist, illustrator and letterpress printer based in Luton. Helen also runs the letterpress workshop at Central St. Martins and is a regular demonstrator at the letterpress workshop at the St Brides Foundation. This record sleeve is just beautifully produced, a really lovely object. Thank you to Helen for sending me a copy.

You can see their debut on the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNyHQTbYGbY

Records available from:
http://www.rhythmrock-it.com/
Helen Ingham: http://www.hi-artz.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.12.2013