Portugal. The Mans’ new artwork is a labour of love and it shows. Designed by Austin Sellers and cut from a single sheet of card.

This artwork came together much the same as the album, lots of hard work and lots of fun. It was really great sitting down with Austin again and getting his thoughts on where the illustrations should go and seeing what he would do with the colors in the end. He really ran with this project and as we speak is still running with it as far as vinyl package and posters and stickers go. He did a truly amazing job in making sure things lined up and worked with every fold. I remember our initial talk and the initial sketch of what would become the package. Austin’s response was something along the lines of “There is no way they will let us do this.” and “You’re going to make me do all this work just to get turned down!”. It took a lot of thought to bring this together as smoothly as it has come. Austin did some really great work with this layout and color placement, there is no way it could have worked without him.
The idea was to make a package out of one solid cut, no plastic. More than anything we wanted to give the buyer something more substantial, a package that could double as a piece of art and not just be a marketable image ready to be tossed upon transfer of music to computer to MP3 player or internet for download (please share once you buy, that is how us little bands grow and how the bigger bands get bigger still.). You may not be able to see it from these rough, ROUGH small scale, handcut package photos but the CD, once transferred to computer to MP3 or internet for download, is also a part of the artwork. The sun. The template is meant to be a mountain that folds down into smaller mountains, much like the mountains that run around our home state and the illustrations are meant to represent the years of my childhood that the album was written through, 1987-93. The years my family moved around the state the most as well as the years I was introduced to films like Lightyears, Fantastic Planet, Fire and Ice and Wizards. Safe bet that those films may have ruined my growing mind.

This outlook is very refreshing in an industry that so often treats the artwork as just another cost in the marketing campaign. Creating a product that cannot be downloaded is also a key way of insuring that fans buy your product and don’t just steal it.

More on the album here and probably a pre-order link on there somewhere too.

Thanks to Fear and Records for the headsup tweet.