The Last of The Ink Spots
Date:2020
For: Myself (personal project)
Brief: Design a vinyl record cover, centre labels, and sleeves.
My Direction: I’ve always liked music from the 40’s and 50’s. The Ink Spots are particularly well known (even today) for their music from these decades. One day I was curious if any of the members were still alive, which is when I read the article from 1978 that was titled “Last of The Ink Spots; Bill Kenny Is Dead.
I decided to make a vinyl record based on the article. It had given me a nice excuse to play with typesetting. I’ve always appreciated when a vinyl record’s surrounding design was well thought out, so I wanted to see what I could do.
The Idea
Finding an Ink Spots vinyl in Canada is very difficult. Vinyl records from the Ink Spots tend to go for somewhere in the hundreds, so in the summer I thought I’d just make one. I found a company that lathe cut vinyls, checked out the legal stuff to see if I was in the clear, and then designed the artwork for the album.
Some of the ideas came directly from Brian Riviera’s work on Post Malone’s album “Beerbongs & Bentleys.” The idea for straight type on the cover came from a shirt a friend of mine had shown me a while ago that had nothing but Garamond in justified text. I was annoyed at how bad the typesetting was, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
All of the grey is meant to be silver metallic print.
Front Cover
Back Cover
A side Label
B side Label
Record Sleeve with A track list
Record Sleeve with B track list