“To me, Crush evokes a slow violencE like the crushing inevitability of self-serving politicaL power-play, climate change, people and ideas being subdued.”
- sam shepherd
approach
I was inspired by the way the music was created, and I wanted to incorporate that idea into my design as well. Floating Points used Crush as a medium for political expression, to voice his anger, hope, fear, and confusion through his music.
It was written in a mere five weeks out of pure frustration with the state of the world, but also with a touch of hope and positivity. The music reflects just that. It’s a combination of harsh, fast, and chaotic beats, mixed in with calm, slow, and peaceful rhythms. Taking all this into consideration, I knew I had to create a poster that reflects the style of the music while also eliciting to the reasoning behind its creation.
solution
The fact that Floating Points made it to my Spotify’s top 5 most-listened-to artists of the year just goes to show how much auditorial research was truly involved. It’s a good thing I love music. I spent hours upon hours listening to Crush on repeat in order to better understand and connect to the music, which helped me visualize it.
I spent a good couple of weeks exploring several artistic mediums, tools, techniques, and ideas. Not all were conventional. The one that stood out to me the most was one that involved paint and a squeegee. I placed an array of paint dots on a sheet of heavyweight paper and while listening to the music, I used the squeegee to smear the paint according to the rhythm of the beats. This resulted in an abstract flowing pattern of a multitude of colours. Like the music, some parts of the composition were heavier and more intense while other parts of it were softer and more peaceful. It beautifully reflects the duality of chaos and hope, as do the colours. The reason I incorporated the letters inside the design itself was to show how our emotions are a part of us and affect our perception of life and the way we view the world.
For the vinyl, I used a different cropping of the pattern but still kept the same visual language as the poster. I chose a semi translucent durable film for the jacket of the vinyl to subtly show the pattern beneath it. I wanted to keep a little bit of that obscurity to hint to Floating Points’ emotional and mental state when writing Crush.
