As crazy as it sounds, we’re just hours away from thirteen new Kendrick Lamar songs, and after Kenny revealed the cover of his new album Damn on social media this week it seems everybody has an opinion on the minimalist design. It’s been meme’d and discussed ad nauseam and now the man who designed it has come forward to discuss and defend cover.
Graphic designer Vlad Sepetov took to Twitter to say, amongst other things, that he’s proud of the cover and though it was “bare bones” he feels like it’s loud and abrasive, just like he wanted it to be.
“Already seeing a lot of discussion about the cover and I’m really excited about it,” he said in his message that took place over a series of tweets. “It’s interesting to see people talk about “bad” design but I’m incredibly proud of this cover. I sort of bucked a lot of what my teachers taught me. I wanted to make something loud and abrasive and maybe some won’t see that, but I’m glad that (Kendrick’s manager) Dave (Free) and (Kendrick) saw the value in making something that didn’t fit the mold. Just given the bare bones we fleshed something out that has a lot of people talking. It’s not uber political like (To Pimp A Butterfly) but it has energy IMO.
https://twitter.com/VSepetov/status/851802055198953473
https://twitter.com/VSepetov/status/851802648462229504
https://twitter.com/VSepetov/status/851803081125675008
https://twitter.com/VSepetov/status/851804279253815296
Then Vlad was asked about the huge parental advisor sticker on the cover, to which he said he wanted to make the sticker part of the design and embrace it.
https://twitter.com/VSepetov/status/851804803998957568
This won’t stop the jokes but it was interesting to see the artist come out and defend and explain his work.
