From the archives: Destroyer’s Rubies (CD folder, interior)

2011’s Kaputt is, of course, showing up on year-end lists all over the place. The cover features one of band member Ted Bois’s fantastic photographs of Dan Bejar. When we were putting Destroyer’s Rubies together in 2005, Ted sent snapshots of all the players. They were of varying quality, varying size, varying color (including a surveillance video screenshot of Fisher Rose) and needed to be unified in some way. 

I printed them out in black and white, made a little book of the print-outs and rephotographed them for the inside of the booklet. Dan and Ted both liked this treatment and it ended up informing the simplified typography on the cover, saving it from an embarrassing previous iteration that Dan called “raindrops-and-lollipops.”

The email chains I have with Dan and Ted from various projects are filled with remarkably patient and useful feedback. They are both articulate in describing their vision, naming what they like and don’t like about something, and trusting that this back and forth is the necessary—and ultimately fruitful—work of design.

(Clickez l’image to embiggen.)