Earlier this month many of the music blogs were talking about how mashup master Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) planned to release his latest album “Feed The Animals” in a Radiohead “pay what you like” style. I checked out the website and immediately thought, “feck the business model – this record’s got a great sleeve!”. I emailed GT’s record label Illegal Art to find out who was responsible, and they kindly put me in touch with Brooklyn, NY based designer Andrew Strasser who agreed to conduct a swift email interview for Sleevelessness.


Slv Great sleeve for Girl Talk’s “Feed The Animals”. What’s the story behind the cover?

A.S. Behind every cover there is a story, haha... There are two parts to Feed The Animals – the title, and the image that we ended up with. I do stage visuals when Girl Talk goes on large tours or plays at big festivals, and all of the equipment was seriously just getting eaten up by all of the comotion on stage. We had large inflatable palm trees and halloween spider archways, all from very suburban on-line inflatable stores. As soon as the inflatables would go up, the chanting impatient crowd would just get a hold of it somehow, and we’d just watch a palm tree get sucked right into the organic mass of Girl Talk fans... never to be seen again. When you go on a 30 day tour, and watch this happen every day, you start feeling like you are going on some kind of an expedition to feed the hungriest of animals (we’re animals too for going along with it).

The cover itself does not relate to “Feed the Animals”. I was doing visuals with Gregg in Las Vegas when he opened for Gnarls Barkley, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and others for this very exciting and very strange Chinese New Year celebration. The crowd was SEATED, and was mostly a hip hop crowd, very mainstream. There was an MC and of course, he’s going to pick on the sorest thumb of the show, which would be Girl Talk... He kicks it off with “so why are you called Girl Talk anyway, what kind of a name is that?”... I think that he was kind of scarred from having to answer that question in front of so many skeptics. The solution was to do a subtle name change from Girl Talk to GT - not an official name change, just a nickname. Gregg originally wanted the GT flames on a brick wall, but I suggested a more ET/Home Alone kind of image, something that references the suburbs more.


Slv Where is the house? Did you take the photo yourself?

A.S. I was in Virginia Beach visiting my family, and I grabbed my moms 6 megapixel snapshot camera and did some long exposures on the house across the street when they had only one light on, and that became the house. Somehow the shot came out perfect.


Slv Did you really set the grass on fire?

A.S. We were really aiming to set a big lawn on fire and actually do it, but the logistics were absolutely bo-bo, so we didn’t do that. I did a micro scale version of the GT on fire with some twigs and lighter fluid, with help from my lovely sister Dana, and our great friend Lisa Ramsey (who was originally going to be a silhouette in the lit window of the house). We preferred nobody in the shot eventually.

The twigs overlaid on the grass was a good first start, but it didn’t look LARGE it made the house look like a scaled down model. I then turned to fire rendering techniques from some really tacky and cheesy websites where they teach you Photoshop tricks, like how to write your name out in fire, or in gold. I took this knowledge and went really far with it - I embellished the flame with some real shots of fire from our barbecue grill from memorial day (my dad was squirting tons of lighter fluid into our backyard grill).


Slv When did you first realise you wanted to be a designer?

A.S. I don’t want to be a designer. I want to be a musician. I am working on my own album right now.


Slv How did you get your first break? (e.g. the first piece of design work that you actually gave a shit about)

A.S. I started in middle school, someone punched me in the stomach for wearing a Mossimo shirt in the halls and I was so infuriated that I couldn’t wear a shirt, that I started researching ringer t-shirts (very skater style at the time). I took a picture of the tide bottle with a 1 megapixel camera (that was a lot at the time) and went over the words TIDE in paintbrush to make it say ZINE. then i did the same with a Chinese takeout box.

I made about 30 shirts and sold them all to the hottest girls in my middle school through a top secret mole in my math class. He had the in.


Slv How did you first get involved with Greg Gillis (AKA Girl Talk)?

A.S. He used to see me around in the cafeteria in college and vice versa – he looked like Rivers Cuomo and I looked like some big fat nerd who tucked his shirt in and wore a tie every day (this has greatly changed, now both of us have beards and we wear ugly clothes all the time like a bunch of hippies).

We eventually hung out once with our friends Mike Ray (who is redoing the Illegal Art website and brand with me) and Alex Preston (who is now in the band Mittens on Strings and makes incredible hand made shirts). I remember that night begging for them not to shave a Ninja Turtle face in my hair (they gave me a haircut the first time i met them and we hung out).


Slv Where do you work and what are you working on this week?

A.S. I work at home, in front of Google Spreadsheets, managing my clients. This week I’m working on my album, and doing some promotional flyers and banners for a Big Gay Cruise in Fire Island – should be fun! I also attended an event on Monday night for my friend Jeremy Parker’s record release party (Tha Pumpsta), I wore my costume (Turns out Andrew is also a performance artist - check out Bad Brilliance for more info).


Slv What records are you listening to right now?

A.S. Lil Wayne + Feed The Animals is the heavy duo right now.


Slv You wake up in Brooklyn, you’ve had 1,000,000 beers last night and a magic badger offers you any item of food you like – what would it be?

A.S. Nachos with cheese, ground beef, strips of beef, burger meat, cow beefs, pork, pork beefs, raw chicken, dutch chicken, deep fried halved radishes soaked in duck fat, sour cream, guacamole, blue cheese dressing, crab meat lumps, cheddar cheese, nacho cheese and drizzled with lime and tequila and flame torched for like 3 seconds or so.

You can check out lots more of Andrew’s work at his website including some excelllent photography.



Strasser also did the above cover for White Williams’ “Smoke” – you can check out the intriguing story behind it at Paper Thin Walls.

Super video for “Squeeze Me” from the brilliantly named Dutch act Kraak & Smaak. Found at Swiss Miss.

My good friend John Foley of bite! informs me that Adrian Shaughnessy is interviewing legendary graphic designer Storm Thorgerson on Resonance FM today. Storm is most famous for his album covers for Pink Floyd such as the iconic sleeve for Dark Side of the Moon (below). You can listen online at 4pm (GMT) today.

Last night I went to Dialogue, the LCC (London College of Communications) Graphic and Media Design degree show. The work of two graduates particularly caught my eye.

Look What You’ve Got, is described by designers Shaz Madani and Billy Woods as “a celebration of everyday objects we have falled out of love with”. The project featured a collection of household items which had seen better days, and a series of beautifully made posters encouraging the viewer to take a second look at these items in a new light. Unlike many of the show’s exhibits the project was accompanied by a helpful booklet allowing outsiders such as myself with no knowledge of the brief to understand what was actually going on.

I also saw some excellent typographic posters by Niccy Kemp. Unfortunately Niccy’s site is all Flash so I can’t deep link to the posters (or extract a decent image to post here), so you’ll have to visit her site and click on My Work > Monsoon Trust to check out the goods.

Berlin based Morr Music have always had great art direction. Now in an interesting creative collaboration, they’ve launched an online shop with two other small German labels, Karaoke Kalk and City Centre Offices. At A Number of Small Things you can shop for all three labels’ releases alongside Human Empire’s clothing, bags and posters. This is a great example of how like minded labels and creative types can club together to create a better shopping destination for their online fans. The site is currently in beta and they aren’t yet selling music downloads, but I’ll be watching how it develops with interest.

The Ministry of Type spotted this great Zune ad in Wired magazine and kindly scanned the pages for all of us to see. Nice use of typography. Original article here.

Keith Richards is a legend. He may be less than coherent as a result of years of “recreation” but what he says is still pretty interesting to anyone into music and rock ’n’ roll culture. Louis Vuitton have realised this and included a piece about him in their “Journeys” project, a series of travel themed films and photo essays featuring icons such as Richards, Mikhail Gorbechev and Catherine Deneuve.

The piece is a good watch with film-maker Annie Lebowitz making the most of her less than “focussed” interviewee through good edits and handycam style footage of Richards’ London. The real reason I’m talking about this here, though, is that this is a great example of branded content. Many of the musicians in our industry are interesting people with great tales to tell. With physical music sales declining and digital yet to catch up, artists are having to look at other ways to make money. Brands like Louis Vuitton benefit immeasurably from “aligning” themselves with characters such as Keith Richards. Pieces like this don’t tend to ram the brand down the user’s throat but instead focus on the content, so the deal’s not too bad for the punter either. I reckon we can expect to see more of this type of brand “enabled” music content in the future.

Here’s something a bit different – MiniGods speakers combine a vinyl toy aesthetic with a functioning pair of desktop speakers. They’re currently available in “Brazil” and “Mexico” (pictured above) incarnations with a “Japan” version coming soon. Dvice has a review and more pics.

At a time when music packaging is on a downward spiral, French electro / folk / pop act ALB have generated a surprising amount of publicity for themselves on the back of the outrageously extravagant (and unashamedly retro) packaging for their debut album Magne-Disque. The album even comes with a mini-cover for each song. Catch the full low-down and lots more pics at Sleeveage.

If you haven't seen this by now you’ve obviously discovered the Lost City Of Atlantis, snapped up a bargain two bed flat and are still waiting for the underwater telco to hook up your broadband.

I’m posting it anyway because it’s brilliant. The ten years of internet “memes” featured in this three and a bit minute vid, such as Daft Hands, Chocolate Rain, Diet Coke & Mentos etc. represent a notoriously difficult thing to harness for the purposes of marketing. The brilliant thing about this video is that it does just that, and ruins it for everyone else in the process. The very fact that the video’s director (Mathew Cullen of Motion Theory) managed to get all these crazies to take part is a herculean feat in itself. Nearly 5 million views in a week says it all – hats off and wish I’d thought of it myself.