Son Lux, We Are Rising
When Ryan asked us to make the artwork for the new Son Lux album 'We Are Rising' — which he wrote and recorded in just 28 days (as part of NPR’s RPM Challenge in February) — we decided to set ourselves the kinda-ridiculous challenge of doing the entire project—from build-out to photoshoot to final design and layout—
in only 28 hours.
The album has these persistent themes of vapors, ephemerality, and, of course, the idea of rising throughout both the lyrics and the music itself. We liked the idea of juxtaposing the ephemeral and uncontrollable colorful smoke against the rigid and static flat grid of 28 cans, each representing one day of the album's production time. It felt like a representation of the chaotic ephemeral beauty of the music emerging from the rigid form and time-constraits of its production.
And then finally the Son Lux name itself is not imposed but rather emerges from the contrast between two points in time — the negative space of the letters shows the beginning of the rising, and the background shows some moments later at the end as the smoke cloud starts to coalesce into something larger than its parts.
Fullscreen
BACK COVER
TRANSPARENT BLUE VINYL
WATCH HOW WE MADE IT
Concept, Art Direction, Photography & Design by Marke Johnson & Nathan Johnson.
The Making Of Artwork Video shot and edited by Michael Chiarelli.
Very special thanks to the whole photoshoot crew: Kimberly Johnson, Katie Chastain, Zachary Johnson, Seth Johnson, Tyler Johnson, Brad Weiman, Armando Romero, and of course Maxx Johnson.
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