Giving a voice to your visuals

As an art director, I’m always looking for ways to make the visuals do the talking for our clients. It rarely stands alone, but successful design should help tell an audience a bit more about the organization, or better yet, let them have an experience. Does your design echo your personality? More importantly, does it make the audience feel anything? If it doesn’t, it probably should.

My inspiration for this kind of work strays well outside of the nonprofit world and catches me wherever I find it, in this case, in the very strange but amazing artwork of Stones Throw Records.

It’s often pretty weird music, and as such, it demands artwork that’s equally colorful. Enter Jeff Jank, Stones Throw’s art director. His work spans a huge range of styles, dutifully capturing the flavor of the music it represents. Whether it’s heart-shaped vinyl for a throwback soul singer, or the cartoon rendering of an imaginary rapper, altogether it’s some of my favorite design living out in the world today.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Read Pitchfork’s interview with him here. Or feast your eyes on the Stones Throw Instagram.