This is the album artwork for “Beautiful, Terrible” the debut album of Brooklyn punk band Cruel Children. Cruel Children’s music concentrates on accepting the ugly, telling confessional stories, expressing difficult emotions, and through this expression turning it into something beautiful. The concept of this album cover was for the band to calmly drink tea in fancy dress in front of a pile their mess. It was a concept that felt parallel to the “this is fine” meme, and symbolizes finding joy and power even in the messyist of situations. Junk, memorabilia and important objects are piled on top of undone laundry. Mixed in are Easter eggs related to the band’s past.

 

The lettering was hand drawn in my sketchbook. It was photographed, edited, and added on in Photoshop. I decided on hand lettering for this project because the music it is representing is very raw and personal.

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