October 2010
33 posts
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Rob Sheridan interview with Sleevage on the PHM...
I asked Rob about the cover job and if there was pressure to bring something new to the cover, why no more pink, if it was a small job or a big epic project. He was kind enough to give me one of the most detailed responses we have ever received. Thanks Rob.
Rob S: When we began the Pretty Hate Machine remaster project, Trent discussed with me the idea of tweaking the original artwork a bit to reflect that this was a different version of the album, updated from its original release. We talked about maybe just changing the color scheme a bit – Trent was keen on losing the distinctly 80′s hot pink color, for one. It seemed like a fairly straightforward project, as I certainly didn’t want to try and radically alter an album cover I’d been looking at since I was a teenager, and that some fans had known very well for more than two decades.
The first bump in the road was that no one had the original artwork. We left no stone unturned – we even reached out to the original designer, Gary Talpas, but he had given all his materials to Nothing Records long ago. Our best guess is that those materials were lost somewhere in Trent’s split with his old management. I tried scanning the old vinyl cover, but it was poorly printed and looked like an absolute mess when scanned. Even after cleaning it up a bit, attempting to separate the colors was fairly disastrous, and the resolution was terrible.
In 2004 I redesigned NIN’s “The Downward Spiral” for its 10th anniversary Deluxe Edition. In that case, Trent still had all of Russell Mills’ original art pieces that were used in the album, so I was able to re-photograph them and present the artwork in a new and interesting way. With this album, I didn’t have that luxury. It became clear to me that I was going to have to start from scratch.
I tried a number of different approaches – I even got some various mechanical parts from hardware stores and arranged them in a way that resembled the shape of the cover image (I’d remembered reading long ago that the original image was taken of some sort of factory machine, with spokes that looked like ribs), and photographed it in different ways, then attempted to push the contrast of the photos and pull shapes out of them. Nothing was working out very well though. It either looked too far away from the original cover, or like a weird, sad imitation of it.
Finally, I decided to painstakingly recreate the original cover as closely as possible. Using my scan of the original as a template, I digitally painted the image in extremely high resolution, the same way I’d approach an illustration. I used a meticulous set of masks to recreate the “interlaced” horizontal line effect of the original cover. After a lot of trial-and-error, I eventually finished with a new version of the original artwork, created in a very different way, but retaining the same spirit.
At this point I was free to play with the color scheme. I tried a wide variety of colors, ranging from darker, more muted versions of the original color scheme, to ones that looked nothing like the original. The favorite – both of Trent and myself – was the dark blue/blue/off-white combo used in the final image. It was a bit similar to a PHM t-shirt that’s been around for a while, so there was a sense of familiarity in the colors.
I then carefully recreated the title font from the original cover, and the black frames it sat in. The font, a stretched-out version of Helvetica, looked dated to me, but I wanted to be respectful of the original design and not mess with it too much. When Trent saw what I’d done though, he wanted to try a new approach to the title text, as he felt the font was just too dated and could use a more modern look for this remaster. So I went back to the original album and looked at the font that had been used for the credits and lyrics, which turned out to be a slight variation of a font Gary Talpas later used in The Downward Spiral. Putting the PHM title in that font was way too similar to The Downward Spiral, but when I put it in caps it created an odd mix of vintage NIN and modern NIN – perfect for a 2010 remaster of a 1989 album. Trent liked this approach much better, and we settled on the way we wanted the title set on the album cover. The image sitting behind it – my recreated artwork – still felt a bit flat, though.
To push the art a bit further, I got the idea of printing the image out at a very high DPI and photographing it with a narrow depth of field, allowing parts of it to fall out of focus. This gave a new depth to the previously flat artwork, and it turned out to be exactly what the image was missing. After quite a few experiments, I ended up with the image that is now the cover, and immediately felt I’d finally gotten this thing to where I’d wanted it to be. I sent it to Trent without any of the type or anything on it, and while he’d been somewhat lukewarm on the previous material, he was immediately excited about this one. “That looks fucking great,” he told me, “we’ve got it.” I put the black frame and our new type treatment over the new cover image, and everything clicked. The new cover, with the unmistakable shape of the “ribs” and the interlacing effect, remained respectful to the original and still recognizable, while adding a more modern feel and a “fresh coat of paint” on the colors. This is not meant to replace the original cover. This is the cover for this 2010 remastered edition of the album.
The original CD cover was oriented sideways, which had never felt right to me, as the vinyl cover had a distinct vertical orientation of the full image (something I preserved in the new vinyl edition). I’d always wondered if it was a byproduct of the way the insert needed to sit in the jewel case. Either way, I wanted to bring the vertical orientation over to the CD this time around, but I also wanted to preserve the way the whole image folded out from the cover in the original CD insert. We certainly didn’t want to put this in a jewel case, so to accomplish the vertical fold-out, I came up with a unique L-shaped digipak package, where a panel folds down from the cover to reveal a vertical extension of the artwork. I also decided to put the black frame and the title text on a transparent O-card that slides over the digipak (very similar to what we did on The Downward Spiral Deluxe Edition) – so when you slide the O-card off, the image underneath is bare. It turns the black “frame” around the image into an actual frame, adding a new layer of depth to the art.
For the remainder of the package, I was cautious not to add much extra artwork and overdo it. The original sleeve was extremely minimal, only using type on black amidst a few variations of the cover image here and there for the internal art, so I wanted to preserve that. Some might say it’s boring to have plain black pages with text on them for the lyrics, but I’d rather stay true to what had been done previously than add a bunch of art and risk having it feel like an altogether different album. The only other piece of art in the original insert was a photograph of Trent. Revisiting that, Trent wasn’t incredibly excited about including it in this version, and we didn’t have the original photograph anyway, so we left it out.
Throughout this process, I was very concerned with being respectful to the original artwork. This is not my album, and as a fan for many years, I have the same attachment to the original art that many other fans do. So my tendency was to play it safe, but it was Trent who felt a bit less precious about the original art, and he pushed me to do something that was visually further away from what I had originally intended. I think in the end we found a great middle ground, and we’re both really pleased with how it turned out. Recreating the art – somewhat by necessity – was a huge honor, and so far it seems fans are generally pretty pleased with what we’ve done…even if there’s no pink in it.
Sleevage: Is there any rejected artwork or experiments?
Rob S: The only rejected ideas were my own ideas that I rejected before I showed them to anybody – mostly in the department of trying to recreate the artwork photographically. That was the only time I was tempted to do something dramatically different from the original art – for the most part my instinct was to not drift very far from the original, as it just didn’t feel right to me. Redesigning an album you listened to over and over again as a teenager is a pretty strange task, so I was understandably cautious.
Sleevage: Can we see the failed experiments?
Rob S: Ha, I think I’ll keep those failed experiments in the vault for now – they failed for good reason!
Sleevage: Why lose the pink?
Rob S: We lost the pink because Trent just wasn’t crazy about it anymore, and felt it was an immediate way to take the artwork out of the 80′s for this updated version.
Sleevage: Has Gary seen the new artwork?
Rob S: I don’t know what Gary thinks of the new design, but he was very friendly when we reached out with him and said he really liked all the stuff we’ve been doing with NIN’s design in recent years. I hope he appreciates what we did with the new cover.
Sleevage: Was this planned to be a simple job. Just pump it out quickly or a labour of love?
Rob S: I thought it was going to be a simple job, but the fact that we didn’t have the source art made it actually quite a project. Between my various failed experiments at recreating the art photographically, the meticulous way I ended up doing it by hand, and the amount of finessing it took to find the right presentation, it was actually quite a bit of work, and we had a pretty abrupt deadline for it. All things considered I’m pleased with the way it turned out.
Sleevage: What actually is that on the cover? Wikipedia says “Reznor stated in one of his posts on the Prodigy service in the early 90s that: “The cover of PHM is a photo of the blades of some sort of turbine stretched vertically so they would look somewhat like bones or a rib cage.” is this true?
Rob S: That was the same quote I remember reading about what the album cover is – I believe it’s accurate.
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Batman 3: The Dark Knight Rises →
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10 things you could be doing to your code right... →
Think your done with your code? Guess again. This article is a little old and based in th rails world, but is easily translated to any other language, framework, etc.
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“Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.
Many...”
– Seth Godin is a interesting, motivating and inspirational author whom I read a lot of books from. He starts off his rant with a correlation (more or less) that I have joked about with my dad. Then finishes up his rant validating all the blogs I read, people I talk with, books I read and my limited...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-10-17) →
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (19)
Nine Inch Nails (17)
Grizzly Bear (16)
Arcade Fire (16)
Them Crooked Vultures (10)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Beer && Code Tonight at The Rock Bottom →
Beer && Code Wednesday, 4PM at the Rock Bottom Brewery.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-10-10) →
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (49)
Arcade Fire (16)
The Drums (12)
Deerhunter (11)
Deftones (8)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Ozzy Osborne is coming Omaha Jan 16 2011 →
The Prince of Darkness was my first ever concert. Back in 1996 when Ozzy did his Retirement Sucks tour I was there and it changed my life forever. Fast forward nearly 15 years later and he is back, still not retired and I still am in debt for the live changing concert.
Hell yes I am going. Are you?
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Use Gmail and a Mac? Checkout Sparrow!
Sparrow is a new take on email clients for the Mac. Once downloaded its easy to notice how similar to Tweetie it is; which is a good thing. Currently it only works with Gmail accounts, but according to their site… more is coming. Why do I like this?
Native application and native Mac experience.
Clean and new interface.
Not the same old take on Email.
Sync’d properly with...
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RSpec 2.0 Available now
By now all of your applications you program are properly tested. Right? Shame, they should be.
RSpec took the world by storm. Its pretty obvious that any app, library, etc in the Ruby world that isn’t Rails will have some form of RSpec tests in it. That might be a bold statement, but in looking around github.com… the point seems pretty proven.
Now RSpec 2.0 is available. Now...
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WatchVideo: Inside Pivotal Labs.
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“If you just shut your mouth and let the product speak for itself — once you...”
– (Matt Drance). A guy who actually worked for Apple doing some neat things.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-10-3) →
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (63)
Arcade Fire (30)
Deerhunter (15)
HEALTH (12)
Underworld (12)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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User Agent Switcher, agent list file
Do you use the User Agent Switcher in Firefox? I do. Its particularly helpful when building mobile sites, since some mobile browsers use Webkit, WAP, Opera, etc. As it turns out there isn’t much of good user agent list for the User Agent Switcher to import. So I made one today and uploaded it.
After you download the zip file, extract it and the import it in the user agent switcher...
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The winner for UHHHHHH of the day goes to.. →
“Man denies crack in buttocks is his”
A very hilarious headline, but also pretty funny article. People are stupid…
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