The making of the cover design for The Rolling Stone Interviews

Designer: Interviews with musicians lasted for days, sometimes weeks. Everything was recorded on audio cassettes. Often journalists ran out of cassettes and had to borrow some from the musician. Forty years of interviews is a lot of tape. It’s also a metaphor for music which was produced on cassettes as well.

Art director: Cool.

Getting the client’s approval for the idea and starting to flesh it out. Trying out various type designs and different cassettes.

Now we need to find a couple of old tapes, unwind them and take a picture.

Retouching the photo.

The type designer writes the name of the magazine, the art director asks to correct letter g.

Typesetting the cover.

Polishing the details, moving the text around a bit and sending it all to print.