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We have reached the end of the Contagion saga for Arena. This also means that the artwork is now complete as well, so I asked David, the artist and designer of all the Contagion artwork, to provide some background information about it.
David: ‘For Contagious I wanted to do a dark, turbulent image. The idea was to link up with the screaming, exploding head picture in the digipack, so I had the idea of having the rocks caught in a whirlwind of 'angst' and forming the head. I had two choices, as originally I saw the scream forming out of scrap from the collapsed civilisation - if you look closely at the Contagion cover you'll see lots of detritus under the blue smoke. Eventually I went for the stones, so I could follow the look through to the second EP.’
Personally I prefer the cover of Contagium! I think it gives the right feeling of the end of the Contagion story; the hat stand with the coat hanging and in the background the City Of Lanterns.
David: ‘For the second EP, I wanted a lighter, warmer image to finish the whole project off. Thus we have the City of Lanterns which originally appeared in the booklet, and is a theme throughout. The study from the booklet also makes an appearance, with the hero's coat hanging up to suggest he has 'left the building'. I had still got some of the sculpture sitting in my shed, so I had an amusing afternoon taking it out and rebuilding it in my garden. The hat stand I had used before on another book cover, and was from a photograph I took in France whist on holiday (you never know when something's going to come in handy!)’
It’s great to see some of the original photo’s, but I can hardly believe what someone can do with them when I see the final result. You can’t see it has been derived from a photo; to me it looks like it’s been drawn on a computer.
David: ‘I spent a while in an abandoned quarry taking photographs that I could use for this purpose - I also needed some derelict buildings (on the back of Contagious you'll see a bit of wall with the infected sign - a reference to the plague when a white cross would be daubed on the houses of afflicted).’
‘The back cover was deliberately full of fresh air, the contagion having passed. The bandages floating off in the wind are from the cover, and the small pile of stones refers to the lyrics of Mea Culpa.’
When you take a look at the multimedia section of Contagium, you can see lots of extra artwork David made. There are even a lot of designs of covers that haven’t been used for Contagion, the album.
In another episode of Cover Stories, we will write down our ideas about the link between the lyrics and the artwork of the whole Contagion trilogy.
By: Marcel Kolenbrander
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