When it was released in 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind sent shockwaves through the music world. It brought alternative rock to the mainstream and almost overnight made Nirvana the biggest band in the world. The record went on to sell over 30 million copies and is widely considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time.

Part of Nevermind’s success was almost certainly due to its incredible cover, created by Robert Fisher. The cover now features in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection and is regarded as a design classic. But before Nevermind’s release, Nirvana were an unknown band and Fisher was an equally unknown graduate working at Geffen. He explains what happened next.

“I was hired as a designer out of art school and I worked my way up to an art director position. I was excited when I heard that Geffen was going to sign Nirvana, so I went and asked if I could work on it. Nobody at the label had any idea it was gonna be that big. But once I got the advance cassette copy I was blown away.”

After meeting with the band, Fisher learned that Kurt Cobain already had a vision for the cover.

“Kurt wanted a baby being born underwater. Back then before the Internet you would have to go down to the local bookstore and go through child birthing books and try to find photos. So that’s what I did. But it was just like … there’s no way we can make an album cover out of this. I couldn’t find any really good pictures and they were all way too graphic to use.”

After ruling out the childbirth idea, Fisher started exploring other options featuring babies underwater. But he realised the image needed something else.

“We thought ‘Ok, we’ve gotta make it more than just a baby underwater’. So Kurt came up with the idea of adding a fishhook to make it more menacing. We spent the afternoon sitting around thinking of all the funny things we could put on the fishhook. One idea was a piece of meat, like a big raw steak. Another was a CD or something to kind of symbolise music. We went to lunch and we were like ‘How about a burrito?’ ‘Oh there’s a dog, what about a dog?’ … it just went on for hours. I don’t remember who said dollar bill but everyone was like ‘That’s pretty good,’ and that’s what it ended up being. The thing with the whole process … Kurt didn’t come with like a grand plan or a message he wanted to get across. It all kind of came together organically you know, it was like one step led to another step that led to another.”

Now that he had a concept, Fisher needed to find a photographer to execute it. He soon found the perfect person: Kirk Weddle.

“They used to have these things called work-books — big thick catalogues where photographers would buy a page or two and they’d send them out to creatives to try and get work. And this one guy in there, one of his tag-lines was he specialised in ‘submerged humans’. I thought ‘That’s our guy!’. That was Kirk Weddle.”

“We hired Kirk to shoot the photos at the Pasadena aquatic centre. He got four or five different parents to come down and lend us their babies and take turns passing them in front of the camera. If you look closely at the final image you can see the parent’s handprint on the baby’s chest where they were holding it right before they passed it.”

“A week later I got a couple of proof sheets back, maybe 40 or 50 shots. There was just one that was absolutely perfect. The positioning, the look on the baby’s face, the way that his arms were stretched out like he was reaching for something — everything about it was just perfect. That’s the one I picked.”

“Back before computers you used to have guys sitting in dark rooms getting paid lots of money to do what we do now in Photoshop. We had to get the photo scanned and then you would mark it up with pencil to show what you wanted done, like ‘Add a dollar bill here,’ or ‘Put some bubbles here, take out the bottom of the pool.’ Then you’d send it off, and in four or five days you’d get it back. You’d open the envelope like ‘Ohhhh!’”

“I went to the bait and tackle shop and got some fishhooks. I sent the photographer those with a couple of polaroids of how I wanted the dollar bill to look. Then I sent those photos to the colour separator and they scanned them and put them in.”

With the photo complete, it was time to add the other elements to the cover.

“I wanted the word Nevermind to look kind of underwater and wavy. So I had the type printed out and I held it on a Xerox machine. As it was scanning I wiggled the image and it put waves through it. Then I scanned it again and wiggled it in another direction. That’s how I got the wavy type. Now you’d just go on a computer and use filters or whatever, and people say the wavy type is kinda cheesy. But back in the day it was groundbreaking damnit!”

With the addition of the type and the band’s existing logo, the final cover was complete.

“I remember the first time I saw it with all the type on it and everything … it was perfect. I was so happy with it. When I showed the final cover for the first time to the band and management, they loved it and didn’t have a single change. Nirvana was such a great band and the two together just made magic I guess.”

For more classic album art, you can follow Robert Fisher on Instagram.

For better or worse, Donald Trump’s presidency has caused an explosion of creativity. But although it has inspired countless images, few are more recognisable than Edel Rodriguez’s illustrations for Time Magazine and Der Spiegel. In this article Rodriguez explains how he invented a visual language to confront what he sees as a “new fascism”.

In August 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was in crisis due to a series of scandals and controversies. Time hired Rodriguez to create what would be the first of his iconic covers featuring Trump.

"The editors of Time had come up with the headline "Meltdown." and wanted to create a portrait of Trump melting away on the cover. I had worked on many covers with TIME's art director, D.W. Pine, so he was familiar with my previous work showing faces melting, bleeding, or covered in oil. I had worked with a similar technique on a portrait of Gaddafi for Newsweek magazine after he was killed."

Rodriguez explored several directions before settling on the final composition.

“I sketched out a few rough ideas in pencil, and then created a set of digital color sketches which I sent to the magazine. I worked on it for a couple of days, a mix of painted and digital work.”

"The concept was not that complicated, but the trick was making it work. You can do a face that has a bunch of details, but I really wanted it to just focus on his mouth. It was all about him screaming. That's really what gets him into trouble all the time is that he can't stop talking."

Rather than looking at photos of Trump, Rodriguez created the image from memory.

“I don’t really look at pictures of him, it’s all just symbols and graphics in my head. Part of the reason there are no visual cues is that I don’t want to draw his eyes and his nose. How could you just sit there and render his face? I just can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

The final cover was hugely successful, but there was some controversy that Time magazine had chosen to make such a strong statement against a particular candidate.

“I actually thought it would never be published. It was the middle of the election and there’s always a sense that the media should be neutral around the time of an election. But Trump had gone so far and said so many awful things that Time really wanted to show what was going on. I started hearing that it was published on the internet and I was like “Oh wow, they published it!”. I hadn’t heard back from the art director.”

Another of Rodriguez’s most iconic images was a response to Trump’s executive order banning Muslims from entering the United States.

“In 2017 the Muslim ban happened. You had planes trying to land, there were kids that were at the airport and couldn’t get out because they didn’t have the permit to come into the country. I was disgusted by it, because to me that’s something a dictator would do. That’s how Castro and the communists in Cuba treated us.”

Trump’s treatment of immigrants was particularly upsetting to Rodriguez, who received a very different reception when he arrived in 1980 as a nine year old refugee fleeing Cuba.

“At that time I was welcomed with open arms. We were put into a refugee centre where we were fed and given clothes and lots of toys. I remember that — there were piles and piles of toys that were donated, soda, food, all sorts of things. That’s the thing I remember the most is how everything was just gleaming, everything was bright and there was so much of everything. So Trump’s actions made me think ‘What’s happened to my country?’”

Furious at what was happening, Rodriguez created an illustration featuring Trump beheading the statue of liberty and circulated it on social media.

“A few years before this I had created an illustration of an ISIS terrorist. So out of anger I took the ISIS terrorist and I just put Trump’s head on it. I was making a direct correlation that the real terrorist was Donald Trump.”

Rodriguez used the Statue of Liberty to symbolise the damage being done to the reputation and ideals of the US.

“The statue of liberty was something that we always talked about in my family. When I came to New York it was the first thing I wanted to see. It was like a saint … it was America, you know? So I was working with something that meant a lot to me.”

The image spread like wildfire and quickly attracted the attention of Der Spiegel, one of the most widely read magazines in Europe.

“All of a sudden the art director from Der Spiegel calls me and says ‘We’ve been looking through your Twitter feed and there’s this image…Trump as an ISIS guy…has that been published anywhere?’ And I said ‘No.’ She said ‘Can we publish that?’ and I said ‘Are you guys crazy? You seriously want to publish this on the cover?’ And they were like ‘Yeah, we really like it! But can you change his tunic to Trump’s suit so that it looks more like him?’”

The reaction to the final cover was immediate and intense.

“There was definitely a big reaction — probably the most of any of the images I’ve made. The cover was published on Friday at 6pm, and I received calls from The Washington Post and Buzzfeed within five minutes. The next morning, before the printed cover was even on newsstands, protesters had already downloaded and printed the image as large posters, and brought them to protest the Muslim ban on streets and at airports across the country. It made me glad that people were paying attention to the topic. Perhaps it got across how serious this is that an artist would get to the point where they would make an image like that.”

Other covers for Der Speigel followed. In 2017 Rodriguez was asked to create an image in response to Trump’s implicit support for the actions of Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I had drawn Trump with a KKK hood before, but that imagery had never appeared on a magazine cover, and I wanted to do so in response to these events. I created over a dozen different ideas, both pencil and color sketches and sent them to the editors at Der Spiegel.”

“The process was very fast actually. I usually only spend ten or fifteen minutes on something I might put on the internet. If it’s a cover then I’ll spend more time tweaking it and things like that — maybe three or four hours.”

“We discussed it back and forth and felt that the serious, stark image, of a hooded man with a red tie, seemed to say it all at the time. They published the image with the headline ‘The True Face of Donald Trump’. It seemed fitting at this point in time, to show who I thought he really was to an international audience.”

Rodriguez says that the style of his illustrations is a response to the current media environment.

“I don’t think people look at information the way they used to. They don’t sit down for an hour and say ‘I want to read this 10 page story on what’s happening’ — they’re receiving bits and pieces from the web or from Twitter. So we have to rethink how we communicate ideas to people and how we inform them.”

“I don’t see my work as satire. At first glance it might appear funny but then there’s real deep anger and confrontation behind it. I’m basically trying to get people to understand an idea in two or three seconds. I think the most direct way to do that is to use rich, bold, powerful, colourful imagery to get people’s attention.”

“I wanted that visual strength, and making him orange is a very strong visual. For me it’s not even him anymore. It’s more of an object or a brand. It’s about creating a brand and then doing everything I can to destroy it.”

But despite the success of his images, Rodriguez would rather he didn’t have to make them at all.

“My favourite thing is to just be in my studio painting and making things. I have sketchbooks with a bunch of other things that I’d rather to be painting. But I wake up every day and I say ‘I’ve gotta say something about this’. I think that one way you can oppose this insanity is to meet it with a lot of strength and force and that’s what I try to do with my images. The best advice I’ve received is to not be afraid of a painted surface, to attack the painting instead of backing away. The same advice can be translated into other parts of a creative life.”

But as Oddfellows creative director Chris Kelly explains, the show had a problem — it didn’t have a brand.

“Other than using the Adobe typeface there wasn’t much consistency between the shows. The brand was kind of nebulous.”

Oddfellows were tasked with creating a visual identity for the show. Their first challenge was finding a way to represent all of the different creative professions that would be featured as guests.

“Initially we wanted to represent the range of creatives abstractly, using a system of funky building blocks. The blocks were to act like tiny micro-machines that would arrange themselves into creative tools — a camera to represent photography or pencil for illustration. While this system worked for familiar fields like illustration and photography it was limiting and didn’t work as well to visualize the wide range of guests that appear on the show. Professions like UX designer or digital painter didn’t read clearly when abstracted.”

Chris’s realisation that the system needed to work for a more diverse range of professions started to led the team down a new path.

“We asked ourselves ‘what if we string all these different styles together and just be very true to each of the fields we are trying to represent?’ And we’ll use color and form to bring everything together. This is one of the first few moodboards where we really started to develop what this could be.”

Want to learn more about creating a moodboard?

Check out our step by step guide (5 min read)

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Working from this seed of an idea, Chris started to map out the shots that would make up the title sequence of the show.

“We created a written list of the different shots. I like to start with words before moving on to sketches. Storyboards move quickly if you come with a story ready to draw. A sketch that needs a story is just one more problem to solve.”

Working from the shot list, the team at Oddfellows began to sketch out a sequence of scenes to represent the different creative disciplines. They would be in very different styles, but linked together by color and a common object — the sphere.

“This sphere was born of the Creative Cloud logo. It became the central object that we used to transition from scene to scene. Ultimately the piece would end with all the spheres gravitating together like planets in some kind of creative galaxy.”

The sphere concept carried through to all the parts of the brand, like this scene in the title sequence representing the UX design process.

“The thought behind this scene was to start out really chaotic and unorganized but as the sphere reaches the top everything is aligned and working together in unison. Eventually the pieces come together to become a functional thing … the same way a UX designer might go from a wireframe to a mockup to a working prototype.”

“Because this would be the opening shot we designed it to feel like the start of something. The scene itself represents screen design but it also speaks to process and that spans all disciplines.”

Some creative disciplines were represented in more abstract ways, like this scene where the sphere became a pinball representing motion graphics.

“We wanted to infuse some subtle humor and a sense of frustration in the animation — the player whacking away these balls but missing again and again.”

The colours for each scene were chosen to match relevant Abobe products — in this case the purple icon from After Effects.

“This would have been a nice shot if it had stayed a flat, 2D illustration but ultimately we wanted this moment to feel physical and tactile — like something you could interact and play with.”

“We used familiar objects as reference. Here we’re referencing the wooden blocks or toys you might have played with as a child. The scene is not necessarily photo-real but it feels real enough. The key to making it feel photographic is the way you light and texture the scene — the way the light breaks up across the surface of an object.”

In the final shot of the title sequence, a sphere orbiting around a planet becomes the glow of an explorer’s torch illuminating ancient cave paintings. The style of this scene was chosen to represent digital painting in Photoshop.

“From really early on I liked this idea of a torch coming out of the darkness to reveal a character. Even when we were writing the script we knew it could be a really cool transition — to shift from a very graphic moment to a very painterly one. I think it’s little surprises like these that really make the piece successful.”

“Even though it’s only two seconds long, we took time to develop a bit of a character and give them a certain time and place … who is she and what is she doing? We were thinking about the history of art itself and how it started with cave painting.”

Want to learn more about designing a character?

Check out our step by step guide (5 min read)

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“This was a fun shot to research. These are some female explorers from the 1920s and 30s, Jane Goodall, women mountaineers.”

The final piece of work was a triumph, winning its category in the annual Motion Awards. Take a look below to see the finished title sequence for the show.

Florence is a game where two people meet, fall in love and eventually drift apart. The game follows 25 year old Florence Yeoh through her daily routines and her relationship with a cellist called Krish.

The game (which was released on Valentine’s Day) has been critically acclaimed, picking up a coveted Apple Design Award—the second for lead designer Ken Wong whose first success came with Monument Valley.

“Because of my previous work on Monument Valley I was able to get the attention of a publisher and they helped fund the project. The idea was to build the team first and then figure out ‘what are we going to make?’—just trusting that we would figure it out. And we did! It was very scary though.”

Simple mini-games advance the narrative over Florence’s 20 short chapters, the majority of which revolve around common social interactions and daily routines. One example is this mini-game which simulates a conversation between the characters.

“I think of the mini-games as metaphors. The interaction on the touch screen … how can that make you feel something about the characters? One of the stronger metaphors that is in the final game is when they’re on their first dates and you’re putting the speech bubbles together. People often tell us that’s one of their favourite levels. The idea was that it feels like putting words together, but that as the dates go on and they find it easier to talk to each other, the puzzles become easier and easier.”

Teeth brushing is another recurring mini-game.

“Brushing teeth represents the mundanity of every day life. In comics they would call it a “slice of life”, something based on real human lives and real human experiences. It’s not intended to be difficult, the idea is that anybody can get through this and have a nice experience. Later in the game when Krish is in Florence’s life, tooth brushing symbolises that they have fallen into a routine.”

Some of the mini-games changed a lot during development, like this one simulating an argument.

“Originally the idea was that we’d represent an argument with a single puzzle that would start with one of the characters being visible, and you had to rearrange the pieces until the other character was visible. This was a neat idea but likely wouldn’t have captured what it really feels like to have an argument.”

The final game featured represented arguments as increasingly sharp speech bubbles instead.

“I try to make games that anyone can play. It sounds like a really simple idea but I think traditional game designers take it for granted … games are actually really hard! I prefer games that are really simple, where you don’t need to learn a bunch of special moves or practice it for 100 hours — you can just get an idea or get a story and then move on with your life. I think people really appreciated that about both Monument Valley and Florence — that they can just get to the end of a game and then tell their friend about it and reflect upon it.”

The art in Florence was all created by hand, giving the game a unique feel.

“These sketchbooks, this is how we do the art from the game — it’s partly design, partly the final images for the game. I didn’t want Florence to look like a game. I wanted it to stand out on the App Store as something different and fresh. I would scan these sketches and then modify them in Photoshop.”

“Initially the game had a lot more of this magical realism in it, but we felt the story was stronger when we kept things relatively grounded. This level is the exception, where Krish’s music is so beautiful it lifts Florence off her feet.”

The characters in the game went through several iterations as well.

“We wanted to tell a story about people from different backgrounds. Something that we’re really happy with is that a lot of Asian woman and Indian guys really identify with the characters. A lot of people have written to us and said ‘I’ve never seen myself represented in a game like this before!’”

“This is one of the images that we felt really summed up the spirit of the game. The two characters are looking at each other, happy and comfortable with each other. I feel like they are uncertain of the future, but are very optimistic. The couch actually changes colour depending on what’s happening in the game. At this moment, they are filled with joy, so the couch is yellow. In a game where we tell the story without words, images like this are so important.”

Krish’s design was always fairly consistent, while Florence went through a lot of changes.

“The original design had glasses. But the problem was that the position of her eyes within the glasses made it look like she was looking in different directions. So that was a hard design to pull off in the end. There was also something about the hairstyle that wasn’t working in earlier versions.”

“This is one of the first images of Florence’s final character design. The idea was to kind of convey her personality through her hair — a little bit uncontrollable, kind of messy. To me it said that her life it a little bit messy and a bit hard to keep under control as well.”

Both the artwork and gameplay were designed to show the inner states and emotions of the characters.

“This image was from an early test level and it was meant to show that the two characters were going through different types of trauma. It felt like Krish was ‘walling up’, while Florence felt like she was breaking apart. Part of the reason this didn’t work is because it was only visual and not interactive.”

Some aspects of this concept were preserved in the “Drifting” chapter in the final game (shown below).

The team maintained a full storyboard of the game which changed over time as the final narrative emerged.

“We had the whole game up on the wall … that’s a process that we kept up the whole time. As we went along we updated the wall as we iterated and replaced chapters.”

The early version of the storyboard show above featured a chapter called “Reunion” where Florence and Krish meet again many years later. But this idea was absent in the final game.

“Originally it felt like this was their story together. But more and more it became Florence’s story and Krish was just a part of it. It felt like what was most important for Florence was to let go of him in the end — really let go, no comebacks, no second chances. I actually fought really hard against this because I wanted to know ‘What about Krish? Is Krish going to be ok!?’ But really that’s not Florence’s problem any more. You don’t always have to have that traditional happy ending.”

Florence is available now from the App Store or Google Play.

The New Yorker has had an outsized influence on American culture since its launch in 1925. Beyond its legendary long form stories, its unique graphic style has inspired generations of designers.

But with mere days for concepting, design and animation, the process of making its editorial illustrations can be frantic. In this article, Daniel Savage walks us through the creation of an illustration for an article on paper jams.

Daniel normally accepts illustration briefs from his Los Angeles studio, but this time was different.

"The project came to me at the start of a trip to Snowbird, Utah, so most of it was done in transit or at the lodge when I wasn’t waist deep in fresh powder. Nothing beats paying for your trip with a drawing!"

From the ski-lodge Daniel sketched three concepts for his client to choose from.

"The first concept was a view from inside the printer. Paper would fly around until they jammed, then the hatch would open up and 3 engineers would poke their head in. This idea would have been fun animated but might not have been as interesting in print."

"The second concept was an engineer’s picture printed on a piece of jammed paper. Animated it would have gone from a clean to jammed and his expression would have changed from happy to annoyed. There was an opportunity to actually print this and do some stop motion animation."

"The third concept was the direction they chose. Pretty obvious conceptually—the engineer is the one jammed in the printer."

With the direction approved, it was time to start sketching.

"You have to let the static version take priority. A static image can always be animated in some way, even if it's as simple as a blinking light but it doesn't always work the other way around. Having said that, I do try to keep both in mind while sketching (or at least deciding which sketches to present)."

As the illustration took shape, the main character went through some subtle changes.

"I was trying to play up the comedy aspect with the face. They liked it but asked for a geometric face so it felt more scientific."

Once the static version was finished, it was time to start animating.

"Originally I was going to have him get sucked in to the printer then pushed back, but found it funnier to make the poses much more exaggerated with quick cuts to each one. This was animated in After Effects which makes it easier to hit the quick editorial deadlines."

With the animation done, the illustration was ready to publish.

"When Aviva Michaelov puts the image full screen front and center on the website it’s pretty powerful. You can’t ignore it! And seeing your work in print is always exciting—it’s nice to be able to touch it."

In this article, Frank takes us through his process of designing a poster, from concept to production. This particular poster was created to promote a lecture Frank gave called “The Eye Knows” about how words and pictures work together in design.

Here Frank talks about how he uses his studio space to get inspired.

“The wall above my desk has all kinds of recent discoveries taped up: quotes, postcards, visual references, and print-outs of images I find online. It’s satisfying to rearrange things with my hands to understand them differently.”

The content from the presentation was a natural starting point for the design.

“I printed key slides from my presentation and taped them alongside all the visual inspiration, and eventually stumbled into the poster’s concept by repurposing an image I made weeks earlier for the middle of the deck.”

Frank’s early design featured a single eye, but he soon added other elements to create a complete face. The first addition was a nose inspire by John Baldessari—an American conceptual artist who has produced several works featuring deconstructed faces.

“The nose is Baldessari’s — he’s an influence on a lot of the work I make. I love the tone of his work. I admire the kind of self-reflection and humor he shows is possible with conceptual work without having it get too dour or cerebral.”

Then it was time to iterate. For this type of project, Frank likes to finish the design in a single sitting.

“I’m a big proponent of ‘once through, cleanly’. You think about your idea, sketch, then put some glue in your chair and bang it out in one sitting. All of my best work happens this way: posters, collages, essays, outlines for talks, and so on. The work seems to be more cohesive and the energy more concentrated and palpable. If you sit down and what you make is bunk, you walk away, come back later and start over. You don’t keep any of what you’ve done before, you only retain the memory of what went wrong. It’s a silly method, but it works for me.”

As the design came together, the energy of the face began to shine through.

“I forgot how nice it is to work on something and have it look back at you! I’ve done a lot of branding and interface work in the last couple years, which means I’m mostly staring at simple shapes and colored rectangles all day. I love it, but those shapes don’t look back. There’s a face on this poster, and as I continued to refine the design, the potency of the energy it was shooting out became more real, more warm.”

And then the poster was complete.

“I’m still surprised I’m so happy with the outcome. Maybe I can value this design a bit more honestly because it feels like it came from somewhere else. It does a good job of capturing my attitude towards design: affable, intelligent, and clear, expressing some welcome charm.”