Diver & Aguilar // PHOTOGRAPHY / Retro Vinyl
Diver & Aguilar re-invent the golden age of Vinyl sleeve design
“In 2008, Peter Saville Suggested that the Album Cover as an Art form was dead. Here we pay homage to some of those great works of photography and design that have inspired Creatives like ourselves over the last five decades, to immortalize packaging into an Art form.
The Audiophile will tell you many reasons why Vinyl is the superior listening material. But can the art of the album cover actually add to the sheer pleasure of the listening experience?
We believe so.
The whole process for this project started about 6 months ago with the research & casting. Normally with a project such as this it may of been a long held idea that we have wanted to produce, or something that had come straight from the Creative Director.
In this case, I think it was a case of both flicking through our own music design reference books and by chance looking again at those old record collections that had been gathering dust for many years.
I can’t remember what my first visual inspirations were as a child, but certainly seeing our parent’s Vinyl record covers layering around where one of them. It was not just the images, it was the full sensory experience, from the smell to the touch, and of course the sound and crackle of the vinyl record.
There is something special to treasure in the Vinyl record, something that does not exist with the Compact Disc or MP3, it’s like owning a 1st edition book. The Vinyl Album has soul, its own unique history.
Ever since I started studying Photography and Art, I remember being inspired by these great works by Photographers and designers such as Hipgnosis & Roger Dean and the recording artists themselves that have immortalized their imagery into history.
I spent almost 10 years working exclusively with Record companies and Celebrity music artists and this our celebration of an art form which now has changed in the digital world beyond all comprehension.
In respect of the production of this project, first and foremost we have always been Photographers, but also as Artists we became fascinated by the whole design structure of the Vinyl Album Sleeve, the logos, the typography and fundamentally the most educating experience was how we were able to mix high end digital photography and post production with traditional mediums, such as the use of the scalpel blade, varnishes and tapes to achieve our own Sleeve designs.” Diver & Aguilar
