Category Archives: Graphisme

It’s been almost two months now since our album, Sankta Lucia, was released. Everything’s gone really well and the feedback has been great! In this post I’d like to talk to you about all the design work that went into this album. You’ve already seen the posters, but now I’ll dissect the CD cover. I wanted to wait until a lot of albums had been sold before I did this so that our fans could have the pleasure of discovering the design elements for themselves. I know this is often something people look forward to and I didn’t want to spoil the experience.
So here is the Sankta Lucia digipak cover with its 24 page booklet. I spent a long time discussing the look of the cover with our factory to get this finish where you can see the paper fibres. Vincent Pianina often advised me on the choice of materials.

As this is an album about travel I wanted cartography to feature in the design. On the cover you can find the exact places which feature in the songs. I was also very inspired by the imagery of trains. I spent hours in Lyon library researching train signals and any design elements relating to tickets and travel. The style of old timetables was really inspiring.

I really liked this timetable, which I found just like this with the photograph in the bottom right. I thought this idea was cool and it became the inspiration for our poster.

This is another example of train imagery. For the CD itself I came up with a design which looks like a technical drawing of a train wheel. My degree in Engineering turns out to be useful sometimes, although I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in that wheel.

I used some photos that I had taken during a trip I took in August 2008. I wanted it to seem like the group had been to all these places before we’d even gone there. I worked on all the artwork and photos between January and March 2011 so that the album could be made in April. However, the trip we took where we filmed all our clips didn’t take place until August. We therefore needed to be ready a long time in advance. This is why all the group photos in the album were actually taken in Lyon. I decided to only use blue and red, so that all the images tied together. It was nice going back to the places from the photos to film them, however in some cases a lot had changed in two years.

I bought this dress for Alizée. It’s a wonderful hand-embroidered Hungarian dress from the twenties.

Apart from this I made almost all the costumes myself or I collected items which would look like folk costume when they were put together. I studied a lot of original sources and I was also really lucky that a Polish friend lent me a folk waistcoat, which she had as a child. From this I was able to do some reverse engineering and work out how to make a replica.

It took me a long time, but it saved me a lot of money. Speaking of money, we had just under €6000 to make this album. Printing and pressing a thousand albums cost €2500 alone. With the rest of the money I had to cover a 10,000km trip for 4 people, all the necessary equipment (steadycam, memory cards, batteries etc) and the costumes. This basically meant I had no money for the costumes. For example, Lea’s headdress (now the trademark of the ‘girl who plays the flute’) was inspired by the Czech national dress, but on a smaller scale.

It’s my dream to collect all sorts of costumes like this one. As I rarely find any, I make everything myself.

The picture in the middle of the booklet is of Saint Lucia. This festival really inspired me and provided many of the colours in the album. The theme of light was important for us.

By the way, this photo of a forest was actually taken in Ödland in Sweden.

Religion, or rather religions, were the final major inspiration both musically and artistically. What I mean by religions are all the big ideas which have torn the world apart and are based on myth. For me Nazism and Communism are included. At their time they were terrible nightmares where reason had been completely forgotten. The bell towers on the last page are all European and I have visited most of them. The churches come from everywhere: Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava. There are also synagogues from Budapest and Ottoman minarets from Sarajevo and Tuzla.

I really wanted the design to tell a story and be an integral part of the album. If you would like one they can be found here. In another post I’ll do something similar about our musical inspirations.

Translation: Thank you Clare Stovell

This is a poster I made for the Sankta Lucia album release. The first of them will be send to all people who ordered it when it was Ulule time. The others are sold on the Ödland’s website. I’m very happy of the general looking of the colours, because I followed all the fabrication of this. So, if you are curious, I will explain you how all of this is working. The Sankta Lucia’s digipack was designed with the same methods but unfortunately, I wasn’t there when it was done at the factory.
First of all, I worked on a vectorial file. I separated all the graphic elements in three colours levels (bright rosa, grey-blue and dark red). I designed each element on its own layer. The most interessant thing is the small photograph in the middle of the poster. You should draw each little details in red or blue and the result in stunning.

This is the machine which will print the posters, an offsett press. Nothing to do with the desk print machines or photocopiers. This machine has 4 cylinders rooms printing almost all the time with these colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. On this project, I used only three rooms, with different colours. This is why we had to prepare specific coulours for this. This is a better solution because each colour is pure, without trame (a kind of mix of every colours) then I can be preciser when texts are tiny and I love it!

There are the offset plates which are related to each colour.

The paper is ready. This is an offset paper, I prefer it because it’s more beautiful. It absords completly inks and it doesn’t shine, the result is perfect and precious.

There are the Pantone colours. I had choose three of them, but I changed a little bit the rosa to get something better. The printman knows of to make them.

This is here the ink is mixed, at the top of the press.

Some little colour varations to get the perfection.

The last control.

And there are all the poster, we need to cut the marges now.

This is the massicot, the final touch.
And finally, the result…

You can buy them here. And the size is 50cm x 70cm.

Je viens de réaliser les 10 billets d’entrée pour le prochain concert privé d’Ödland, qui aura lieu chez Vincent et moi au milieu de tout notre bazar. Nous nous faisons toute une joie de cet évènement qui est prévu le 20 novembre prochain. Le concert se déroulera dans ma chambre, sur le piano qui sert à enregistrer les albums d’Ödland. On ne peut pas faire plus intimiste comme moment. Évidemment, nous ne pouvons pas accueillir trop de monde, c’est pourquoi l’entrée est limitée à 10 personnes très privilégiées.
Nous n’allons pas vendre ces dix places aux enchères, ni à un prix très élevé. Nous ne voulons pas que la distinction se fasse sur l’argent, sachant qu’il y aura pour certains un voyage à Lyon à financer en plus du concert. Nous avons imaginé quelque chose de plus marrant que nous vous dévoilerons très prochainement en vidéo. Si vous êtes intéressés, il vous faudra être attentifs.

10 places seulement…