Artwork for Plaid — STEM SELL

Design and artwork for a compilation of remixes by Plaid on vinyl picture disc and 28 track double CD in DVD case with spot gloss varnish for Touched Music (a long overdue sequal of sorts to Parts in the Post from 2003).

I starting off by thinking about how a remix could be interpreted as rearranging a track's genetic code and explored giving each remix it's own DNA barcode. This idea suited the remix album concept and gave me good scope to create something visually interesting.

In a very unscientific way I created 28 DNA barcodes (shown in the banner above), making the height of each relative to track length. I gave the image some depth and fuzziness, similar to a photo being developed. This ended up as the background on the CD case – another version, featuring just the barcodes of the vinyl tracks, appears on the picture disc. Wanting to create something slightly different for the vinyl A side, I redrew the Plaid logo in the DNA style. The CD album comes in a DVD size matt finish digipak case with spot gloss DNA barcodes on the front and back. For the digital format I created 28 individual covers featuring each track's DNA barcode (seen in the animation below).

I also designed some t-shirts and hoodies featuring the DNA Plaid logo from the picture disc that were hand screen printed to order.