Bon Iver — 22, A Million
It seems fitting, or rather, necessary that my first post here focus on Bon Iver’s release of 22, A Million. The intimate relationship between Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) & Brooklyn based artist Eric Timothy Carlson was definitely a catalyst for the creation of this blog; & I can’t think of a better case study on the importance of synergy between design & music.
Carlson is an artist & designer, originally hailing from Minneapolis. He began working as a designer in the music industry while still a college student; creating band posters for his friends, & picking up a fascination with symbology along the way.
It was a whole five years prior to working on 22, A Million that Vernon discovered Carlson’s work, & reached out to work together.
“One of my first album art projects was with this hardcore band, Building Better Bombs. And [Gayngs founder] Ryan Olson was in that band, and later I did the Gayngs logo, which was a project largely organised by Ryan Olsen and Justin. …and I just got an email [from Justin] one day that said, ‘I like what you’re doing, and I want you to know that. We have to work on something together sometime.’”
The close collaboration & ideation of the 22, A Million artwork & the expansive array of accompanying visuals largely took place in Vernon’s home in Eau Claire, WI. In an interview with Walker Art Center in his home town, Carlson details the extensive process of visualising each track on the album, which he reveals all began as numbers;
“…multiple numbers at first. So we would listen to each song, talk about the numbers, talk about the song, watch the lyrics take form, makes lists, make drawings. Real references and experiences are collaged in both the music and the artwork. I was able to interview and interrogate each song — digging into weird cores — and by the end of each visit, each song would develop a matrix of new notes and symbols.”
The symbolism behind each track was a result of several week-long sessions at April Base-the recording studio-in Eau Claire.
“…each time was a unique experience focused on that stage of the music. Usually with an intimate group of two or three guests (musicians, writers, chillers, curators) and the studio crew …to make a unique creative space, where each of us would be a part of defining that period of creation.”
For Carlson, these sessions produced a plethora of sketches, which ultimately became a reference point for the final body of work.
“There was an honesty in the notes and collection process that very much influenced the final work.”
In the lead up to the release of the album, Vernon & Carlson worked on a vast range of promotional collateral; on the largest scale were ten murals, painted in cities all around the globe, each representing an individual track.
The site of these murals became the venue for day-prior-release listening parties — a nostalgic album stream, with crowds gathering around a small stereo, listening to the album on a cassette tape. Attendees were also given a newsprint zine featuring more of Carlson’s supporting artwork for each mural.
These murals cemented the visual theme that we saw with the first two lyric videos, published by Bon Iver prior to the release date, & continuing with each track throughout the following month. Carlson spoke on the lyric videos;
“The lyric videos initiative came from Justin. I’m not sure they ended up looking like what he was imagining, but that’s one of the things that has been so great about the project: the trust in the work of everyone involved. I was originally a little hesitant about the lyric video concept, largely due to the quality of lyric videos in general, and because I was dreaming of an entirely abstract/ambient visual component to live with the music online, without typography. But many lyric videos found online are made by fans — iMovie/After Effects motion graphics class projects. I feel that that amateur aesthetic has gone on to inform what official, professionally produced lyric videos look like.”
Watch the lyric video for 10 d E A T h b R E a s T below:
View the lyric videos for the entire album on YouTube.
With the creation of the music videos, typography became an immensely important element to 22, A Million. But Carlson explains that his choice of typeface (Optima) throughout the project, came with very simple reasoning;
“I didn’t want anything too tricky. A system font felt good, since I was working with the lyrics in text-edit documents. Optima just looked so right spelling out “BON IVER.” It sung the first time I saw it.”
After establishing that the graphical component to the artwork (symbols, drawings, etc.) were to be showcased on the jacket of the release, it was decided that the booklet would be limited to just typography. Perhaps the most minimalist component of the physical release.
“By the time I was working on the book I had listened to the album in process nearly a hundred times, so the layout decisions proved natural and intuitive, knowing where the phrases broke, making visual decisions in response to the music of it, using parallel columns where the lyrics overlapped.”
The final artwork for 22, A Million is a collection of all of these individual components; icons, motifs, symbols, ideas — all capable of standing on their own, but coming together to form one coherent body of work.
“The proper album packaging is the legend of symbols, where you find everything all in one place.”
You can purchase 22, A Million by Bon Iver digitally on iTunes, or physically at boniver.org.
If you’d like to see more work by Eric Timothy Carlson, you can visit his website or follow him on Instagram.
For further reading into the artistic process behind 22, A Million, this excellent interview is definitely worth reading. It delves much deeper into Carlson’s work & it’s basically just everything I want this blog to be.
Originally published at www.coverartblog.com.
