Two weeks ago, we published quite a lavish, detail rich cover artwork. So there was the principal feeling that we should not give in to expectations but instead focus on aspects we haven’t tried before. Osoroshisa’s latest album on Petcord, with its Japanese names, offered a good opportunity to us. The first thought I had was that the music sounds rather sad. Since in Japan, the mourning colour is white, I thought of turning that non-colour to a substantial part of the draft.

The motif is an Albizia Julibrissin, with its colours inverted and resulting in that fleecy pastel tones people usually associate with Japanese images. There were some discussions about adding Kanji characters like we did in June last year, but eventually we decided against it, since it would have resulted in an unnecessary complication. There aren’t that much areas where captions can be integrated here and less can help avoid a crammed cover. Also, for the third time, we experimented with a 2:1 ratio canvas on the front. The motif was an ideal choice for that, but Marco is probably right when he stated, that we should not make it a custom and focus on the sqare, which is usually seen first and most instead.