Grammy-Winning Packages Capture Feelings of an Era

For decades, Johnny Cash has been the definition of boldness and has transcended beyond the controversial boundaries most artists have dared to cross—a legend for many. In his memory, Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings released The Legend, which includes over a hundred of his classic tracks. The release garnered three Grammy nominations, and won a Grammy in the Best Boxed or Limited Edition category.

This Limited Edition Box Set includes a special collector's hard cover coffee table book containing hundreds of rare photos, an expanded essay by Patrick Carr (coauthor of Cash: The Autobiography), a CD featuring Cash's first time on radio, a DVD, and a specially commissioned lithograph by Marc Burckhardt, one of Johnny's favorite artists. There is also a smaller Deluxe Edition available.

A Johnny Cash fan himself, Ian Cuttler, The Legend's art director, says he was impressed with the number of great pictures he had to work with. He suggested the 12" x 16" large format for the book because of these images. Cuttler says he wanted the book to have a "scrap book" feel with "grittiness and texture."

"The images were from all times and were colored to the times," Cuttler says. "Color photography from the '60s, '70s, and '80s and so on looks different. I stayed with the original color of each image and chose a heavy yellow paper. Also, I used a lot of black throughout the book since Cash was known as The Man in Black." For the cover, Cuttler says he intended to capture the look of an old road sign. For that he used 100-lb. metallic paper cover stock.

Howard Fritzson, vice president of design at Legacy Records, recalls how Cuttler was left to his own devices. "Ian was just given a bunch of photos and he made the project into something impressive," says Fritzson. "It was a grueling process. He had to make sense of the images and set up a scenario so that the book flows. It took a lot of patience. He also added thoughtful touches like the notes and the hand lettering. He really had a vision. He certainly deserved the Grammy and other awards. I don't know of anything like it."

"The Grammy is a great honor," says Cuttler. "But the biggest award and part of the success of this project was the freedom I had to do what I envisioned."

Illustrations win a Grammy

When musical artist Aimee Mann saw an Owen Smith painting depicting a boxer between rounds, she knew his retro style would be perfect to illustrate her upcoming album The Forgotten Arm (SuperEgo Records). The CD package design and booklet won the Best Recording Package Grammy.

Mann herself had taken up boxing, and the album title is derived from a boxing move in which one arm is used to hit the opponent, causing him to "forget" about the other arm, which is then used to deliver a harsher blow. In her website bio, Mann says, "To me, it's about the fact that the knock-out punch is always the one you never see coming."

According to Gail Marowitz, the designer and co-art director with Mann for the project, the album is unusual in that it's a real concept novella that tells a story with an ordered narrative. In summary, sometime in the 1970s at the Virginia State Fair, John, a former boxer with a substance abuse problem, meets Caroline, who wants to leave her dull life behind. Together they embark on a cross country road trip. "Each song is a chapter and is written as prose rather than in lyric form to keep the story clear in people's minds," says Marowitz. "There are 12 songs, 12 chapters, and 12 illustrations plus the cover."

She explains that when Mann called about Owen Smith, she was already familiar with his work for the New Yorker magazine and believed that his nostalgic illustrative style would be perfect to emulate the pulp fiction look they wanted for the package. Smith is known for his body of work that includes paintings and murals, New Yorker covers, and illustrations for book jackets and children's books.

Smith's award-winning paintings have hung in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Rome, and Milan. He uses rich color and bold figure compositions in a style reminiscent of the Social Realist and Works Progress Administration (WPA) painters of the Great Depression. Other paintings recall the lurid covers of pulp magazine and paperback novels of the '40s and '50s.

Smith says that he created an oil painting for the cover art and the second color illustration was created from the painting that originally caught Mann's eye, which had not been published prior to the album. "The remaining interior illustrations were charcoal on paper, and the yellowed paper color was chosen to emulate the early pulp magazines," Smith says.

Marowitz notes that for the cover illustration, they wanted to depict the forgotten arm move, and it took an exchange of only a few sketches to get it just right. In addition to the actual picture, the composition itself was a bonus. "It was beyond my wildest dreams," Marowitz says. "The light and the color palette were everything I could hope for. We keyed the color palette of the package and the photography of Aimee to that painting."

"I believe it is successful because each of us did what we do best," Smith notes. "We respected each other's talents and the project was not 'over-art-directed.' They gave me a short synopsis of what they were looking for and let me respond to the music and the story."