Fleetwood Mac Tusk 

For my special edition vinyl cover, I want to design a 40 year anniversary edition of Fleetwood Macs 1979 album Tusk.  I have chosen this album as although it is one of my favorite albums, it has one of my least favorite covers. When the album released in 79′, it was seen as an experimental album for the band after their release of their best selling album Rumors, which includes one of the most iconic album covers of all time. The cover for Tusk is just as experimental as the music inside, as it looks as though the album has been handmade, with a rough paper  texture for the back ground, a picture of a dog biting someone’s foot, stuck on the front with a piece of tape, and the name and artist in extremely small subtle type.

The name was inspired by the African nature photography of Peter Beard, who worked on the surreal collages that are included in the album’s inner packaging. The band’s art director Larry Vigon, said the name came from the elephant references in Beard’s artwork. Beard himself states, “The album was named Tusk because of all my photographs with tusks in them.”

These are my first concepts for the album cover. I want to take aspects from the orginal cover and update them to look modern, and to make the album feel special and new. I want to feature references for fans of the album to understand that may not be obvious at first glace for people who are unfamilar with it. I’m heavily inspired by the art used on the inside of the cover and the promotional photoshoots used for the album. 

First concepts

This is my first draft of the Tusk cover. I wanted to take the orginal cover and add colour and structure to it. The orginal cover of Tusk felt very plain and lacking of character compared to the sound of the album and the inside artwork, so I attempted to convey this with pinks, purples and bold typography. The background of the cover is in reference to the dusty, paper like texture of the orginal cover, that can be seen through out the whole vinyl design. I edited an image of a Jack Russell in reference to the dog seen on the front of Tusk, removed the colour and increased the contrast, to resemble the orginal image. I then decided to make the dog look as though it is barking the word ‘Tusk’, as in the title track of the album, the band shout the word Tusk and perform the song with a marching band, so I wanted to emphasize the title much more than the orginal album, as the title is extremely difficult to pick out against the background. For the band title, I used an image of a strip of tape with ‘Fleetwood Mac’ in a typewriter font on top, similar to the tape used through out the real cover. 

This is my first draft for the back cover of Tusk. I wanted to follow the same imagery used on my front cover concept to keep continuity. The back cover of the original cover is very minimal and bare, so I attempted to add more character to it. The album is a double album and therefore contains a lot of songs, so I wanted to break up the track listing to make it easier to refer to. I edited another image of a Jack Russell simliar to the front to make it look as though its the same dog, and postioned it to fit around the song titles. 

I decided that these concepts were not the direction I wanted to take the design, as they felt like an alternate version of the original cover, rather than a special limited edition anniversary cover. The cover felt old and I didnt think that it would appeal to a modern audience of Fleetwood Mac. I also feel that my cover fell into the same issues that the original cover does by feeling bare and lacking connection to the atmosphere of the album.

Final design outcome

This is my final cover design outcome. For this concept, I decided that I wanted to make the cover more modern so as it would fit in with other vinyls in a record shop in 2020. I wanted my design to feel as though it was special and new for people who wanted to buy this iconic album as an anniversary celebration.
For my colour scheme, I wanted the main elements to really pop off the cover and be eye catching, in contrast to the original design. The black back drop with a grain texture allows the title and the image to come into their own, rather than blend in.

I used the same image of the Jack Russell that appears on my first concept, and edited it as though it was Infrared, leaning into a more psychedelic style. I changed the font of the title “Tusk” into a 70s wavy text, with a gradient fill. I made a triangular shape and angled it as though its coming out of the dogs mouth. I then transformed to text to fit into the shape to suggest that the dog is shouting the word “Tusk”, just like how the band shout the lyric in the song. I added a gradient and embossed effect to the text to make it look as though it was slightly raised on the vinyl cover when printed. For the band title, I added the same effects, but to make the text look as though it was a shiny black UV printed embossed title. 

To mark that the album was re-released as a 40 year anniversary special edition, I designed a sticker to go on the front. This signifies the purpose of the re-design without infringing on the design its self. Its states that it is an anniversary edition and lists some of the singles included on the album.     

This is my back cover design for my Tusk vinyl. I used the same back drop for the front to keep continuity, and made all the elements black and white, meaning that when the whole vinyl is opened out, the front cover will stand out even more. I listed all of the tracks on the album and split them up into part 1 and part 2, as the album is a double vinyl. I then listed all the production and credit details at the bottom in much smaller font, so the audience know to look at the songs listed first. I added the copyright details along the right side of the cover to divide the spread and frame the design. I inserted an image of the band on the back and made it look as though it was an old photograph and added a sellotape texture to either corner of the picture, like the image of the jack Russell on the front of the original cover. I added the record company and the barcode to the bottom of the image to make it apart of the design.  

I decided that i wanted my vinyl cover to be a gatefold case, so for the inside spread I wanted to use a large dramatic image of the band to make the design feel special. It also contrasts to the original album as it included bizzare and abstract collages made up of pictures of the band and the dog on the cover. 

On the left hand side of the gatefold cover is a pocket that contains the part 1 lyric book and the sleeve that holds the part 1 vinyl. The right hand side has the part 2 lyric book and the sleeve that holds the part 2 vinyl. On the sleeves there is art of a room that relates to the art seen on the original tusk sleeves. In the original part 1 sleeve, the band can be seen to be floating around the room, surrounded by obscure objects and 3D shapes. In part 2, the room is empty with only the clothes and objects left. In my updated version, I wanted the room to feel modern and lived in again, and included refernces to the original cover and the bands history. 

This is the front and back of the part 1 sleeve. Both images on either side of the sleeve use a pink craft paper texture, referencing the beige sandy paper used through out the original cover.The image on the front shows the first iteration of the room. The room is dark and lit by a neon sign in the corner reading the word “Tusk”. This is in reference to a neon light seen in the corner of the first cover. The blinds in the room are pulled closed, relating to the backdrop used in the tusk photoshoot images seen in both of my lyric book designs. The plant next to the window refers to the plants seen on the floor of the original design. The cheetah print chair is in reference to the chair that Mick Fleetwood can been see to be doing a headstand on in the part 1 sleeve, which is then shown to be on the ceiling in the part 2. The Jack Russell sitting on the cheetah print chair represents the dog that can be seen through out the whole original cover, and is a main element of my cover design. The top hat and the cane is a reference to the mascot of Fleetwood Mac, which is a penguin that wears both of these items, so I wanted it to appear as though this is where the penguin lives, and that he has left them here, just like how the band members left their items behind in part 2. The pink rug on the floor ties into the African imagery seen in the collages in the original cover and to the name of the album. The sphere, cone and cube that can be seen floating around the room relates to the abstract 3D shapes seen in the part 1 sleeve, inside and outside the window. On the flip side of the sleeve is a coloured image of the band together in front of the blinds that I reference in the image on the front. I then added the same sellotape texture for both images that I used for the back cover image to tie everything together. 

This is the front and back cover design of the part 2 sleeve. The front shows the same room as part 1, only for this one the room is much brighter as the blinds are open, revealing the band members looking into the window. They are seen to be much bigger, suggesting the the room is smaller to house the dog and the penguin. The image that I used for the band is part of a set of pictures taken of them in front of a fake sky backdrop. The chair that the dog was sitting on can now be seen to be toppled over on the floor, suggesting that the dog had knocked it over in shock of seeing the band at the window, as it is now on its hind legs looking at them. The 3D shapes have moved from their original position, suggesting that they float about the room. On the flip side of this cover is a similar image to the one on the part 1 cover, only the band have moved positions and the image is brighter. Both sides also use the same pink craft paper and sellotape effect as part 1. 

Either side of the gatefold cover also hold lyric books for part 1 and part 2 of the album. For the cover of each of the booklets, I used the same black grainy texture that I used for the front and back of my cover. I used a slim and minimalist font for the covers, so as not to take away from the art on the sleeves . I used different colours fro the font on either booklet to make them easier to tell apart. The back of the covers have the same black texture. 

Inside of the lyric books I wanted to use the same black and pink textures that I used on the outside covers so as not to divide the lyric books from the design of whole cover. For the pages of the book that include songs from the album that were released as singles, I included an image of the band member who are credited for the lead vocals on that track on one page, and the lyrics to the song on the other. I chose images from the same photoshoot that the pictures used on the sleeve came from. Each image is made black and white to make them more dramatic and to relate to the images seen on the back cover and the inside spread. For the song lyrics, I placed the text on a rectangular beige texture, to look as though it was old paper that had been typed on, as I used a font that resembled typewriter text. For the songs that were only album tracks and not released, I put them on pages next to each other without an image, to further highlight the single tracks. In both booklets, there is a double page spread that includes a large image of the band together to break up the booklet and make it more exciting, as these images through out my album cover help to capture the period of time that the album was recorded in, and make these images feel as though they are special and exclusive to the album, which is why I chose them as the inspiration of my art direction for this design. 

This is my vinyl design. I decided on a marble finish that would capture the  colour palette of the cover design, and thought that it would look good as it spun around on the record player. For the inner sticker, I decided to use my first design idea, as I wanted to include it in some way, as I like the design, just not for the front cover. I removed the title from the design and instead listed the tracks on either side.