I had the pleasure of talking with the creator Marty Kenney about his Fake Album Covers website. Marty, also known as Mantis, designed a site that allows others to generate fake album covers and provides them with an outlet to show their designs.
The rules are simple since there are only three and they are as follows:
1. Generate a band name/artist based off a generated Wikipedia word/name
2. Generate an album title based off of using the last few words of a quote that is also generated by a link.
3. Generate album photo/artwork based off a limited number of flickr images that are also provided by a link.
In designing the fake cover, you can use any kind of editing software to create a square proportioned graphic; 685 x 685 pixels using the above method. You are also allowed to manipulate the photo; as long as in so far that the original image is for the most part, recognizable. Give it a try!
During the whole process of running through the rules and generating an album cover, I got a chance to ask Mantis a couple of questions concerning his ideas about the site. Here is what he had to say:
Damion: What got you into Graphic Design?
Mantis: I grew up in Maui, Hawaii. ---which is the most isolated inhabited landmass on earth. As such, culture out there tends to become a bit insular and to some degree lacking in freshness and innovation. Which basically, as a culture junkie as I was in my formative years, led me to seek out as many forms of media as possible. Being pre-internet, magazines were huge in allowing me to understand what was happening thousands of miles away.... they provided a tether to what was going on in the world. So basically I was breathing in graphic design as a way to access the world. I also have always drawn and painted, so in High school I discovered that commercial art was basically the only viable option for me to stay doing art, and make a living. And so I developed a love for design from there.
Damion: What inspired you to start the Fake Album Covers Tumblr site?
Mantis: A friend of mine posted a design "challenge" to make fake album covers on Tribe.net years ago, and then he recently revived the game on Facebook. I started making them pretty quickly, and decided they needed a permanent home on the web. With the ease of creating a tumblr page, and the proliferation of nonsense blogs, I figured, "why not put them up there, and invite people to submit?".
Damion: What would you tell others to get them interested in being part of your site?
Mantis: Designing album covers is fun! And it's a great exercise for designers of all skill levels, to be given specific criteria, and then develop a solution even if it .... Just follow the instructions and go crazy.... Its good practice work, for when you're bored, and Angry Birds just isn't cutting it.
Damion: Where would you like to see this go?
Mantis: I would like there to be enough submissions for there to be daily updates, and see the whole thing grow, and get as many people interested and involved as possible.
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