With the vinyl, I wanted it to be a mysterious artifact, with an aura of intrigue. It needed to be aged in order to capture the aesthetic of something that was found, and have several points of interest to catch a person’s attention. It also needed to be inline with the personality of the music, with slight cult undertones.

Initially I asked the vinyl press I used, Dub Studio, to try and make alterations to their vinyl sleeve such as adding tears and dust in order to make it look aged. However the packaging they sent me was too clean and just had tears. Additionally there was a date stamped 2012 on the packaging, which completely took away from the aesthetic. All in all, using the sleeve the gave me was not a feasible.

As a replacement for the vinyl sleeve supplied by Dub Studio, I went to the local charity shops to find an old vinyl and use the sleeve off of that. Fortunately, there was a sleeve with no vinyl that suited the purpose. It had tears, and odd brown stains on it that matched the look I was going for. However, I felt this would not protect the vinyl sufficiently so I endeavoured to make use of the mail packaging as a protective cover.

As a means of injecting some of the personality of the music, initially I had the idea of innate scribblings of a mad man being written onto the front of the sleeve. Delving further into this idea though, I felt that another character would have to be created with the intent of providing backstory for the sleeve, and I couldn’t piece together a solid idea in my head other than writing random words down. I feel it would also have either given too much story away, or pushed people away from the idea that it was The Boketist on there depending on what was written. For this reason I decided to use the cult logo I had designed for The Boke, in order to present the idea that it was The Boketist on the record.

To strengthen this idea I used the same rainbow tape used on The Boketist’s amplifier on the inner circle of the vinyl itself. This helped strengthen the brand of the vinyl, whilst adding another point of interest. To make the tae look more aged I warped it with heat from zippo lighter before sticking it on.

In addition I needed to consider what “material” the design was going to use. I initially thought of using aerosol spray paint, which was around in the 1920’s but rarely used. However, that had too many connotations with Hip Hop culture, so I decided against it. Inspired by Dub Studio’s stamp on the back of my delivery package, ink was also considered, with the design then being stamped on via potato to give it a vintage press look.

In the end I decided to simply draw out the design in blood as it fitted in with the idea of a cult following for The Boke, and the aesthetic associated with that.  In order to achieve this, I used a diabetic needle to draw out the blood safely and in a precise manner, and used the resulting wound as if it was a pen nib. I then sterilised both my wound and the design with alcohol gel and alcohol wipes in order to eliminate health risks.

In order to age the outer packaging, as well as add intrigue, I set light to the top of it along with the corners to make it look like it had been in a fire. I also used a combination of mud and water to put out the potential inferno, which also helped dirty up the packaging and make it look aged.

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