From Madonna to New Order and Oasis, one man’s odyssey to make an ‘atlas of album cowl maps’

Growing up in rural Wangaratta in north-eastern Victoria, Damien Saunder spent many a wintry day listening to music on the household’s file participant. Just beneath the stereo was a Reader’s Digest atlas. “Anytime we placed on a file, I’d get out the atlas,” Saunder recollects. “It was like a gateway to the world – a technique to dream, discover and let your thoughts wander.”

Decades later, music and maps have come collectively once more, this time in a espresso desk e book: Maps on Vinyl, a world-first survey of the cartographic affect on album sleeve design; an atlas of album cowl maps. It’s the e book most music followers – and map-makers – by no means knew they wanted.

Saunder is a cartographer by commerce. Formerly director of cartography at National Geographic and head of cartography at Apple (“I can’t speak about what we do there,” he says), he additionally helped develop a system for “mapping” tennis matches utilizing ball-tracking know-how, which in flip led to him working with Grand Slammers together with Roger Federer.

But music and album cowl design have all the time been passions. While he was learning typography on the ArtCenter College of Design within the US, a lecturer really useful taking a look at album covers for inspiration. “That’s once I questioned: have maps influenced album cowl design? Turns out, they’ve – although unusually, it hasn’t been studied in cartographic academia. So, I dove in.”

The undertaking turned a four-year labour of affection: 32,000 phrases and a set of greater than 415 vinyl records – a few of them deeply obscure, some celebrated.

Artists with sleeves within the assortment embody Oasis, Coldplay, Talking Heads, Devo, Bob Marley, XTC, MC5, Queen, New Order, James Brown and Weezer. Others you’ll not have heard of except you’re into Belgian speedcore.

Some main names within the design and graphics world are there, too: Peter Saville (New Order and so forth), Curtis McNair (Motown’s in-house designer), Neville Garrick (Bob Marley’s artwork director), Roger Dean (maker of fantasy worlds for the covers of Yes and Asia LPs) and Pedro Bell (Funkadelic, and so forth).

Saunder collected bodily copies of every file and photographed all of the sleeves himself. That was one job he grossly underestimated, he says. “I arrange a light-weight room in our lounge, photographed every one, made positive the white and black colors appeared as they need to, cleaned them, colour-corrected them – three to 4 duties per cowl … instances 415 covers. I pushed by, however I undoubtedly had some moments of doubt.”

Then there was the analysis. Where doable, Saunder tracked down the designer chargeable for every sleeve design to ask them how their idea took place and what it means.

The choice standards for the e book was strict: no panorama work; no satellite tv for pc pictures. “A map needed to be an abstraction of a geographic kind – actual or fictitious – and present spatial relationships. That distinction helped slim the gathering.”

While maps are sometimes celebrated for his or her magnificence, they will additionally comprise layers of which means, says Saunder. “Even probably the most fundamental shapes of nations can draw out lots of emotions – optimistic and detrimental.”

The causes for utilizing maps on album sleeves range. Some replicate origins – the nation or metropolis a band or artist comes from – whereas others are extra aspirational. Peter Barrett’s sleeve design for the UK urgent of Madonna’s 1983 album Borderline, that includes conjoined maps of New York and London, speaks of a star about to make it within the UK. (“Did Madonna log out on it? I don’t know,” says Saunder. “Is she into maps? I don’t know, however that will doubtless be the story behind that specific one.”)

Some designs deal with world social or environmental points. Others map the thoughts, imaginary locations, emotions, worldviews – or, within the case of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s The Equatorial Stars, deep house.

Among Saunder’s private favourites is a sleeve from the long-gone Iowa alt rock band House of Large Sizes, exhibiting a cake whose icing is embellished with a map, with a bit lacking. “It’s a commentary on how we’re consuming the world piece by piece, nearly with out noticing,” says Saunder.

Another favorite cowl comes from Belgian punk band Hetze: an illustration of a globe dangling by a thread from the forefinger of a sublime, long-nailed hand, by tattoo artist Florence Roman.

Then there’s the minimalist cowl of Mary Scholz’s album California, a collaboration between the singer and guitarist Zachary Ross, exhibiting a large brush stroke within the form of the golden state, the paint fading out in direction of the coast. “It’s like a endless horizon of alternatives being swept off into the ocean,” says Saunder. “Having gone off to work and reside in California myself, meaning one thing to me.”

During the writing course of, Saunder spoke to influential graphic designers comparable to Peter Saville, creator of sleeves for Joy Division, New Order, OMD and Ultravox. He has three covers within the e book – one in every of them created for Canada’s Martha and the Muffins primarily based on a 1:150,000-scaled map from the National Topographic System of Canada.

“I fired off an electronic mail considering he [Saville] can be too busy or no matter, however … we ended up having a fantastic chat. He has a real ardour for the language of maps and cartography,” says Saunder.

All proceeds from the sale of the e book are going to Support Act, an organisation serving to musicians take care of the emotional, bodily and monetary challenges rife within the trade. “Without music, there are not any album sleeves or books like this,” Saunder says. “It didn’t really feel proper to revenue from others’ art work, so this was my means of giving again.”