Nothingheads
The Art of Sod
Design by Max Bloom
Max Bloom is a graphic and UX designer, currently working at Dentsu, London, and independently with artists in the music industry. We spoke to Max about capturing the raw energy of The Art of Sod the first vinyl album release by Nothingheads, the low-fi, post punk band from London.
Released by Sister9 Recordings (2024)
Hello. Please tell us about the brief and commission. Max: I used to design posters for Paper Dress Vintage, my local live music venue in Hackney, London. Sometimes, bands I designed posters for would reach out and ask if I wanted to work with them. My collaboration with Nothingheads started this way. I designed a live music poster for them that featured a woman with a Chewbacca mask on her head. Clearly, that caught their attention, because a few months later they got in touch asking if I’d design their album artwork.
I didn't know their music before I designed the gig poster, but I loved what I heard. I read that Steve Lamacq described them as a "riffier, more brittle version of Public Image Limited," which helped me contextualise their sound.
I communicated directly with Rob, the singer of Nothingheads. I always prefer speaking directly to the band rather than going through their manager or record label, who act as middlemen. He didn’t give me much of a brief but did touch upon a few themes on the album; technophobia, voyeurism, menial household chores, amazonian mines and unattainable pleasures.
Rob mentioned he liked the gig poster I created for them and referenced some of my other artwork, all of which had collage elements and a relatively limited colour palette. This was helpful, as I quickly understood the aesthetic they wanted. Rob suggested the idea of ‘a horse’s head on a body wearing a dress in a technophobe nightmare of some kind,’ riffing on the original Chewbacca mask poster, with the caveat, ‘please ignore that if it’s crap.’ I quite liked it, and a variation of Rob's idea ended up as the main visual reference for the single artworks, which I also designed.
How did the music inspire the creative process?
Max: Whenever I design album artwork or a gig poster, I always listen to the music throughout the process. I loved this album as soon as I heard it. It's a bit heavier and more dissonant than what I usually listen to, but, as Steve Lamacq said, Rob’s snarling, nasal voice has a strong resemblance to John Lydon’s, which I immediately connected to. It reminded me of bands like Magazine, Fugazi, and Mission of Burma.
Listening to Nothingheads' music really helped me contextualise the band’s sound and understand their influences. The raw energy and chaos of the music immediately made me think of using collage and found imagery. I also researched the visual language of '70s and '80s punk records, which often feature rigid, defined typographic treatments, and I spent time considering how to integrate these two opposing worlds.
What did you research when developing ideas for artwork?Max: When researching initial ideas for The Art of Sod, I gathered references and scanned material from books and magazines. I like analysing how an image works physically, which I find more impactful than looking at it on a screen. I scanned reference material from my books about Peter Saville, Vaughan Oliver, Jamie Reid, Neville Brody as well as imagery from my wife's collection of old children’s science books, possibly from the 1980's, which became integral to the final outcome.
I then created three initial mood boards. I like to offer artists multiple mood boards, separated into different categories, because I think it helps them hone in on a visual direction from the outset.
The first mood board featured collage imagery made from monochrome and photocopied elements, sometimes punctuated with a single accent colour. With regard to the composition, I supplied a few reference images that included an obi strip, a paper band providing information about the album, or text that was arranged in a solid block of colour cutting across an image. I’ve always loved obi strips. Whenever I see a Japanese edition of an album, I think the obi strip always elevates the original artwork.
The second mood board responded directly to the theme of technophobia. I researched old advertising imagery featuring telephones, TVs, and alarm clock radios. There’s an ironic and sardonic tone to The Art of Sod, and I thought that creating a collage from vintage adverts might be an interesting response.
The final mood board explored themes of consumerism and menial household chores. I researched the visual language of old detergent packaging, which was often extremely bold, characterised by big typography, bright colours and bold shapes. The album The Correct Use of Soap by Magazine was also an important reference point.
Please share an insight into the design development.
Max: The band responded best to the collage and limited colour palette presented in mood boards one and two, which I developed into initial cover designs. They liked the images from the third mood board but didn’t feel it fit with the music.My first cover concept referenced Rob's suggestion from our initial email exchange. I created a collage using elements from the aforementioned children’s science books, combined with a woman’s body found in a magazine. The result was a weird, slightly surreal space-age image, which I contrasted with big, bold, condensed typography and light pastel tones, referencing photocopied punk posters from the 1980s. I Liked how this approach suited the direct, unapologetic nature of the music, and the band really liked this too, later using it for the single artwork (pictured above).
For the second concept, I experimented with black and white imagery, offset by a bright red obi strip featuring bold typography. The contrast was very striking, and I felt it sat in both the Punk world and the more austere world of Factory Records. I also experimented with redacted lettering for the album title, however, the band noted that the initial version looked like it said Art of the Sod, so I rearranged it for the final artwork (pictured above).
I created two options of the second concept, each using different black and white imagery. The first was a collage made from magazine. The second was a very small section from a children’s science book about the human body, which I think was a cross-section of skin. The image was so small that I had to scan it at 1200 PPI to get a high enough resolution. Scanning at this micro level revealed amazing bitmap textures that I couldn’t originally see.
Something about the second image really stuck with me. It was abstract, but it suited the album’s visceral energy. It looked old, tactile and lo-fi, yet also timeless. It also had a sense of movement, which became more apparent when I played the opening track, Private Pyle. I could imagine blood cells moving around the cover, gaving the blood red obi strip a new sense of meaning. I created a few variations using colour imagery, but I’m so glad we stuck with black and white. It feels much more classic.
Design by Max Bloom
Buy the Nothingheads 'The Art of Sod' vinyl here