The cure record sleeve
This project is a speculative gatefold record sleeve inspired by The Cure’s music, aiming to reflect its themes, mood and tone. Key motifs included nature, dreams, fear, introspection, otherworldliness, and isolation. I wanted to merge my interests in nature, dreamlike imagery, and music into one cohesive piece.
I explored how physical record sleeves could interact with digital artwork through augmented reality, adding hidden ‘easter eggs’ and referencing song lyrics. This experimentation added depth, enhancing the immersive narrative experience. The applied augmented reality to the design has a strong focus on user experience.
The Cure’s A Forest and Lullaby, inspired imagery of entrapment and hidden threats. The lyric “come closer and see, see into the trees” links directly to an AR feature revealing a hidden ‘spiderman’ in the trees.
I subtly added the word ‘Lullaby’ into the front cover’s spider web. With my colour choices, I have tried to reflect the band’s dark, atmospheric tone.
The phrase “Eye spy something beginning with S” hints at themes of search and discovery in both my illustration and the music, subtly pointing towards the hidden spiderman amongst the forest and suggesting that something unknown is out there. When using the augmented reality on a mobile device, you can move around the scene which reveals the ‘spiderman’ hidden amongst the forest. The candy stripe legs are initially hidden amongst the trees.