Whole Lotta Red
by Playboi Carti
Packaging design
In this ever-changing age of music, the rise of popularity of punk-rap – explained by ‘oneblockdown’ is omnipresent. The rapper at the forefront of this is none other than Playboi Carti. The Atlanta-born rapper has always expressed his liking for punk rock, with many today calling Carti ‘a modern-day punk icon’ which is also evident in his music. His raw and frenetic energy that utilises heavily distorted 808 drums with the repetitive nature of the beats creates a grimly effective piece of music. The task of this project was to produce packaging for the re-launch of a product.
Whole Lotta Red: Record redesign front & back
Initial research
The examples found that best represent the punk-rap genre are shown to all feature heavily distressing imagery with elements such as demonic-looking people, lava-burning eyes, and spray-painted tongues. Further research highlighted that the record cover needed to feature heavy texturing and layering to create distortion and noise.
While listening to ‘Whole Lotta Red’ I identified themes of infectious energy, assisted by relentless beats and heavy distortion. The combination of these elements helps to create a sharpness. From this point in the project it was established that my record had to hit three criteria:
Use imagery that connotes infectious energy.
Use imagery that creates noise and distortion.
Use imagery that creates sharpness to help resemble relentlessness.
From this initial research, I began searching through Google images and Pinterest for inspiration on the elements that I would use in composition to create a well-layered record cover that hit all criteria.
Initial ideation
Being unsure of what to sketch initial designs I started by sketching elements that could be included as part of my design without it being the whole thing. The other sketches are a more simplified version of my design by having a little cut-out showing some of my design through the hole itself, almost masking the chaos hiding inside.
Initial ideation sketches
Various punk-rap album covers
Inspiration featuring infectiousness, distortion, and sharpness.
Inspiration featuring infectiousness, distortion, and sharpness.
From here multiple rounds of digital experimentation were carried out. Despite, this I kept finding myself in the same position with each different version – my work felt disconnected from the research I carried out at the start of the project and the music on the album. This led me to strip back to my research with an attempt to reframe the direction of the project
Initial ideation digitised
Rethinking design
My prior design concepts lacked the elements that my initial research had highlighted, all of the designs that I had produced felt very flat and lacked much meaningful layering which would help create depth. Due to there being not a lot of distortion or effects that play with the viewer’s minds, there was also a lack of any movement in the designs.
I decided to strip it back and begin layering the image on this page. This image worked as a great foundation as it encompassed all of the outcomes, the fire acts as an infection as it violently spreads through the house (usually seen as a safe place). The way that fire spreads can distort our very eyes, while the sharp remains of the burning house show abrasiveness and relentlessness. Using this house as the foundation allows for strong undertones to remain no matter what follows.
Taking the original image into Photoshop using different adjustment layers and removing blending options allowed me to produce the updated image shown below.
This new image is the perfect foundation for the rest of the design. It achieves this as all basis of my original research criteria have been hit. The brash spreading of fire with the deteriorated disease-like pieces of white that attack the image from the corners of the canvas show a strong infectiousness.
Adding noise filters over the image helps add a sense of movement as if the user was there staring at the fire. This effect creates audio illusions as the crackling of the fire can be heard from the image. The sharpness of the images is a combination of things, mostly through the house and the pop of colour that emerges from the red.
House being devoured by flames
Edited original image using Photoshop