Ritual — Superb Birth
The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.
The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.
Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!
Dear visitor of The Art Corner!
Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)
The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.
Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.
- Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
- Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
- Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
- Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
- Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
- Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
- Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?
Mattias Norén
Ritual — Super Birth (Ritual AB - LOMCD-2, 1999)
Design
Booklet front cover artwork by Patrik Lindqvist, all creatures by Adam Lindqvist
Booklet concept and layout by Ritual
Band photography by Henrik Gustafsson
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 2.1
Comments
It's not beautiful, but at least it has some kind of identity. It has more identity than the cover of the first album by this Swedish band did, but still I like the first album much better. Both the cover and the music.
I think we have seen child paintings too many times on covers, and it never gets very interesting.
The booklet is also of a much lower quality than the previous. My opinion is that Fredrik Lindquist, who is a very good musician, only to concentrate on the music for the next album, and to let someone else do the artwork. And hopefully he can wait a few years until he lets his son get another chance to do another cover painting for them... 😉
