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Music & Art: Insound's Favorite Music Designs

Editor’s note: Music & Art was a column on Design Milk, but when we created Art Milk we thought it worked better over here. We believe that the art associated with music, such as posters, album art, and t-shirts, is a unique niche and warrants a dedicated column. Plus, we’re suckers for a great album cover.

Grizzly Bear – June 7th, 2009 show poster designed by Florafauna

Florafauna is one of our favorite design studios and though they’ve done several prints over the years that we’ve coveted, few have come close to this design for Grizzly Bear / Here We Go Magic. Whoever’s picking designers for Grizzly Bear’s current tour (we’re looking at you Ed Droste) they’ve got an eye for design with great prints also popping up from Ordinary Co. and Dan Stiles but this one seems to top them all. Were the print not associated with any band it would be tops but while repping one of our favorite releases of the year it’s too much not to love.

The Walkmen – September 12th, 2008 show poster designed by Sonnenzimmer

Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher of Chicago’s Sonnenzimmer always seem to elevate the rock poster above mere advertisements and this print for The Walkmen almost requires a double take to even realize this is a show poster. Seems the duo had a bit of disagreement trying to decide whether to take the figurative or abstract route on this one, secretly we’re a little glad they opted for the latter because those strong lines and muted hues are more than easy on the eyes. Not your typical Walkmen poster, but then again, that’s what we love about it.

The Black Keys – October 2nd, 2008 show poster designed by Mark DeVitt of Methane Studios

This one ties up all those great military poster themes (ala Shepherd Fairey or you know Cuban Dictatorships) and throws a nice tangent into them with some naughty double imagery. DeVitt’s never had any lack of devilish imagination and the fact that this poster was for a show at Atlanta’s Tabernacle, a converted Baptist Church, makes this one feel just a bit more dangerous.

Earth – Radio Live LP from Southern Lord Records

A crisp, clear, 180g pressing of live Earth radio sessions is a pretty exciting thing around the Insound offices, Earth are the kings of low frequency drone but still enmeshed enough in rock’s past to have recorded with Kurt Cobain. What’s even more exciting is that Earth’s fist official live document is lovingly packaged in a cloth textured heavy cardboard sleeve with metallic silver foil stamped artwork by Don McGreevy. With only 3,000 copies pressed, this isn’t just a requisite item for Earth fans, it’s a necessary limited art piece that also just happens to test out the bass response on that new pair of speakers.

Jason Yates – Artist Music Journals Vol. 1 by Soundscreen Design

Our friends over at Soundscreen Design have pretty much made it their mission to merge the worlds of music and design and now they’ve even got the designers dressing their work up like records just to keep the crossover complete. This is the first in their series of Artist Music Journals, a project that takes new photographic and design work from their favorite designers and packs them up into 10″ record jackets sealed with a sticker repo of the artist’s signature holding it shut for authenticity. Couldn’t be more perfect that issue number one featured Jason Yates of Fast Friends, the man behind incredible posters for Animal Collective and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Yates’ work for the series is beyond epic and even involves an instillation that covers the insides of an East LA home as well as Jason’s take on concert photography. The books are beautiful and limited, just like we like ‘em.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.