Kapote

Wildstyle House Vol. 1

Jimmy Turrell is a British graphic artist and video director. His work layers mixed media which he translates into campaigns, music videos, editorial, and music sleeves, for clients including Beck, Sony, Hugo Boss, BBC, and Estrella. We spoke to Jimmy about reflecting mood, tone and atmosphere through spontaneity and imperfection. Work that feels alive, rather than overly designed.

Hello. Please tell us about the brief and commission.   Jimmy: The project was commissioned by the Toy Tonics label (Berlin), as part of Kapote’s Wildstyle House series, which brings together producers with a distinct, left-of-centre energy. I hadn’t worked with the label before, but I was very aware of their output and the visual world they sit in. It felt like a natural fit.

The brief itself was relatively open, which I always prefer. There was a clear sense of wanting something that reflected the eclectic, cross-genre nature of the compilation, but without a rigid visual direction. That freedom allowed me to respond more intuitively to the music rather than trying to solve a fixed design problem. For me, it became less about “designing a sleeve” and more about building a visual atmosphere that could sit alongside the record.

How did the music inspire the creative process?
Jimmy: The music is restless, in a good way. It jumps between references, moods and eras but still holds together as a coherent whole. That idea of “dots joining” really inspired the visual approach.

The artwork was created specifically for this release by responding directly to the tone of the compilation, which sits somewhere between house, disco, Afro influences and more raw, early electronic textures. I wanted the artwork to feel slightly unstable, energetic and imperfect, like it was shifting between different visual languages in the same way the music moves between genres. There’s a looseness to it, but it’s still intentional. The mood is tactile, playful, and human, but with an edge, and not like polished club graphics.

What did you research when developing ideas for artwork?Jimmy: In general, my work is driven by a mix of music, analogue culture, and the tension between digital precision and physical imperfection. My starting point is usually quite broad, rather than conducting project-specific research, and I didn't share specific references with Toy Tonics. It was more of an understanding of their world and then pushing that through my own lens.

For this project, I was thinking a lot about early dance music visuals, DIY record sleeves, and the imperfections you get from analogue processes. Things slightly out of register, misaligned type, ink behaving unpredictably. I’m constantly collecting references from pop culture, (pictured above) print ephemera, football graphics, underground flyers, and older forms of reproduction like screen printing and newsprint, which all fed into this project.

Please share an insight into the design development.