Art And Design

The main thing to bear in mind about his album is that it is deliberately urban. It explores ideas of what a city is and dwells on futurist and degraded fictional urban scenarios. Think Bladerunner. The original cover was mainly typographic with ‘kufi' script from the Koran in the background.

We felt the overall feel of the original was slightly misleading as neither the colours used or the background design felt urban enough and this was very much what we wanted to concentrate on. Cold, hard, urban elegance were high on the agenda.

The scripted design in the background was replaced with part of a circuit board. This is a cold and utilitarian design whose form is dictated by its function. It is also a conductor of energy which in both cases makes it an ideal metaphor for a city.

The colours were going to be very important here and a three colour spec was settled on of metallic silver, the nearest grey to this silver and black. No colour was allowed and this combination produced a subtle but elegant effect. The colour scheme was inspired by a trip to New York that year.   Nick Robertson, Wordsalad

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