93 TOURS

Website & CD Cover for Downlodable French Hip-Hop Compilation

Bande A Part (a sub-branch of CBC Radio) launched a project with Sirius Satellite Radio that assembled 27 Hip Hop artists from Quebec. The result was distributed on the web as a downloadable compilation.

I was brought into the project (the logo was already designed) to create the navigational page menu, streaming visual collage (when the songs play) and the downloadable CD packaging.

After emerging myself in the genre it became apparent that the music’s relentless wordplay offered the perfect opportunity to explore its visual relation to typography. Portraying Hip Hop as an explosion of words, where each artist has the same 26 letters to piece together – but that the results reflect the idiosyncratic subtleties in how each individual interprets this restriction.

To suggest this, each song has a different typeface assigned to match an aspect of its internal workings. The incorporation of the Scrabble system was used to emphasize the organic morphing quality of the verbal gymnastics.

A large part of the color palette was directly influenced by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work. His Graffiti beginnings, involvement in the early days of Hip Hop culture and insistent application of the Word as Image legitimatized his overt presence and quoted reference in the project.