Beardy – Satellite etc album art
Track cover art for the 2020 album SATELLITE etc by Baltimore-based rapper and producer beardy. The art direction is inspired by ’90s Generation-X CD covers, experiences on the early Internet, and y2k techno-optimism.
Space Grotesk and its older monospaced cousin (used in the little “BEARDY” logo) provide a dose of modernity to clarify that the work is looking back on the 2000s from the present and not simply emulating them whole cloth. We discussed a lot of directions, all balancing the vibes of growing up online, dealing with broken connections both digital and personal and the twin lost arts of physical music media and software packaging.
FF Screen Matrix works double duty conceptually. Sure, it evokes ideas of “cyberspace” and technology, but it also evokes memories of a time when those were new ideas.
When reviewing the finals for these we realized they look “small”; almost like Minidiscs or some other proprietary music format that kids would be encouraged to collect and trade.
The covers are based on a simple two-column layout; elements can move up or down but not horizontally. The stickers, like a real sticker, are slapped on in “random” locations not constrained by the grid.
