The Orange Zest: MidwestLove Art & Design

A vital aspect of music that is often overlooked is design. It is not just cover design, but t-shirts, posters, logos, websites, and more, and you thought you just wanted to play music. When done right all of this design work blends with the sound and style of the band, and simply becomes another aspect of what fans already appreciate. The challenge for the design is to balance the commercial nature of the packaging business and their own artistic drive. Marky Hladish, a designer and musician, has managed to strike a balance by creating album covers that are wonderfully artistic, but still professional and polished.

Marky designs under the name MidwestLove Art & Design, and he was recently kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): One of the functions of MidwestLove is album cover design. This may not be the right question to ask someone who designs album covers, but do you think the importance of the album cover is decreased as digital delivery and on-line retailers increase? I know it is increasingly important that a cover looks good as a thumbnail, but when you purchase an album personally does the cover weigh in your decision to purchase?
Marky Hladish (MH): First off let me say that I am a huge advocate of the physical, tangible album cover. I'm not saying that digital media is a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. I do a lot of work in that realm. People just treat something differently when they can hold it in their hands. Maybe it's just the tactile experience, I don't know... but there's definitely something different about digital media. Call me a purist, but it just doesn't evoke the same emotions compared to something you hold in your hands or hang on your wall.

As far as answering your question, I'd say that the physical album cover has definitely lost some importance in the respect that it's not mandatory anymore. It's almost a luxury item for smaller bands to have their CD's see a print run and physical release. But in another respect it's become more important to the people who do value it's worth. Now, you'll find that some artists really sink their teeth into the validity of the physical release, if not just to stress the fact that it is more than just the audio. If a digital download is really just as good as a physical CD, then why have we been seeing extended packaging releases and special editions of albums? I'm sure there are cases where that's just a tactic by a record exec to sell more product, but I've also seen an attempt on artists' behalf to have their listeners re-invest themselves in the idea of their art being tangible, something you touch and have a real experience with. To me, the album cover has a huge part in that.

There's no contest between going to a show, seeing a band, having an experience with that band, handing them your hard-earned money, taking a piece of their work home with you, being able to put it in your stereo, reliving that experience again when you need it, and finding a band on myspace, bit torrenting their album, loading it on your iPod, and forgetting about it a few days later. We've all done both and most of us know which was more meaningful.

OA: Do feel the on going vinyl resurgence may save the album cover? Do you design with vinyl in mind and then shrink it down to cd, cassette, flash drive, etc?
MH: I really don't think that the album cover will ever fully disappear, it can't. When you hear "Abbey Road", you immediately think of that cover with the Beatles in the crosswalk and John in the white suit and Paul with barefeet... right? You don't mentally conjure up an image of the track listing, even though that album had some timeless, immortal songs on it. So, I think it's safe to say there will always be a place for the album cover. People will need to associate a visual with the audio, and the artists should be the one to tell them what that visual is. But conversely I don't think that every band will have a physical copy of their album in the very immediate future. It's just not necessary for some bands anymore, especially smaller bands without label support. For a small band looking to trim expenses, there's no way that you can beat having your music instantly available for purchase to anyone in the world without the help of a massive distribution channel the way you can with digital distribution.

The thing is, album covers and album art fill in the gaps in communicating what the artist may want to say beyond their music. It lends tangibility to the ethereal experience of listening to sound. When I'm working on a project that I'm really into, I can't help but get all philosophical when it comes to the bands and the artists and what they want to say. Especially the ones that I appreciate and the work I get to do for them. I have to look at my job as an extension of their audible artwork. It has to say all the other stuff they might want to say with their art that the music can't get to.

As far as vinyl goes, I've actually never had a chance to do a cover for vinyl. I would love to (...hint, hint bands). It would be cool to have that much canvas space to work with. But unfortunately, most of the bands and artists that come to me want to press an affordable CD to sell at shows, and then they tend to focus the rest of their resources towards the much more affordable route of digital distribution. I can only hope that vinyl's ongoing popularity with collectors and such will help to ensure the album cover's longevity. Vinyl for most working class bands is a luxury in the bonus category of print material.

OA: One musical art form that doesn't seem like it will ever go away is the concert poster. There are artists that make a serious name (not to mention a living) for themselves by working with bands to create unique and interesting posters. You have done posters for Kid, You'll Move Mountains, David Bazan, and others, do you enjoy working on posters? It seems like it would be a more artistic endeavour than an album cover or even t-shirt.
MH: Concert posters are so much fun to do because they can be fleeting. They are meant to merely grab your attention and nothing more. Once the event is over, there really is no more use for the poster outside the realm of the concert poster-philes (like myself), where as with an album there is an ongoing purpose with that piece. An album cover gets to define that band or artist's place in history, for all time. So bands and artists tend to put more of an emphasis on the importance of their album covers in relation to concert posters. That's not to say that there can't be great thought and fantastic art put into a concert poster, there's just a lot more riding on an album cover in terms of longevity of purpose. Some of my favorite artists are strictly concert poster artists (see Jay Ryan and Jason Munn). On the flip side, it takes something special to be able to communicate that much information in what usually amounts to a quick glance.

OA: Geek Talk: What type of software do you like to work in? Are your ideas sketched and scanned or do you work directly in the program?
MH: As far as software goes, I am most definitely a geek. When I'm not drawing, I live in Adobe Illustrator and I use a lot of Photoshop as well. I tend to do a lot of pen and ink illustrations that are then scanned and played with in Illustrator. I even do some watercolor stuff, although I'm not that great at it. But yeah, almost every piece I do is a combination of physical and digital art. I was initially hired out of high school to a small children's entertainment company to be an illustrator, but that sorta grew into me being a full-on graphic artist, so I guess I've taken into mixing both worlds. I actually have a "sketchbook" section of my website that I've yet to launch. I love getting into the creative process and sharing that with people, and blogs are such a great medium for that sort of thing. I have countless blogs by other artists that I check daily just to see what they're working on. But I'm still really timid about my techniques and methods. I've never had any formal training, so a lot of the time I feel as though I'm just trying random stuff and seeing if it works or not. Ha ha... I'm sure the people who are trusting me with their projects love to hear that.

OA: What's next for MidwestLove? I know you have a passion for music, but do you see MWL branching out into other areas like literature or maybe more corporate projects?
MH: Music stuff is definitely what I enjoy the most and where I find myself being most articulate and prolific, but I actually do take on a good deal of "business" work. The corporate guys tend to pay a bit better than musicians... ha ha. I've always just taken on anything that comes my way, even if I don't know how to do it at first. Being a full time, free-lance artist I've never really been in the position to turn down work. It's definitely hard out there though, I have to continually be ready to take on new work. But as far as new projects, I'm starting to get back into web development, something I was away from for a little bit. I've been teaming up with some amazing new programmers and working on some pretty fantastic interactive web stuff that the working-class band can afford. That's the hopes, at least.

I would love to get into literature or magazine design but I honestly wouldn't know where to start. I have always had a steady stream of music based projects, but that's only because it makes sense in my head for me to do that sort of work. It feels natural to me and I'm constantly in contact with bands and musicians from playing music myself (plug plug!!). Plus, I just really like it. I understand it, I think, and I love working with other musicians. Even when they're difficult to work with I'm thankful that I get to interface with them rather than a boss at a job somewhere. I could be waiting tables or selling insurance or something. I'm thrilled I get to do this everyday... I know I'm lucky to wake up, have coffee with my wife, work from home and spend as much time with my family as I can after getting to draw all day long. I'll probably just see how long I can keep that up before someone tells me to get a real job.

For more information on Marky and MidwestLove Art & Design please visit his website.