The Cinematic Orchestra ‘Motion’

unused cover layout idea

unused label designs

unused CD on body designs

RELEASED: 27 Sept 1999
FORMAT: 2xLP / CD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN45 / ZENCD45
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: unknown
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

The first album was one of the easier design jobs for TCO, the title was a godsend and I knew straight away what I was going to do for it. The image chopped up and stretched across both front and back cover is actually an outtake from a Mud Family photo session where they were moving about in long exposure shots so that everything was blurred. The problem with this design came with the way I wanted the CD to be packed and racked in the shops.

I designed it so that the front cover showed through the back of the CD case – a completely flat space for the design with no hinged window down one side. This seemed to confuse people as it was such an alien concept that you could turn the case round and even rack it like this in the shops. In the UK I think they refused to rack it the right way round and in the end we just went with the usual conventional way of printing it ie: booklet with front cover on and tracklist on the back. In N. America I think they went with my idea although I have no idea if it was racked correctly.

I’ve included a load of alternate or early designs for covers and labels here too as I went through a …

The Cinematic Orchestra ‘Channel One Suite’ / ‘Ode To The Big Sea’

etched side of remix promo 12"

unused etching design

logo texture

logo texture variants

early unused 12" design

unused 12" variant design

label idea

early label idea

RELEASED: 1 Sept 1999
FORMAT: 12″ / Ltd 12″ promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN1284 / ZEN1284P
DESIGN: Openmind
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Etched one-sided promo 12″ with Arc remix of Channel One Suite
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Essentially a double A side, I wanted this to have two covers, one for each song rather than a front and back. With the new Cinematic typeface I had fun overlaying different sizes and then printing them out on tracing paper before overlaying them and rescanning it all for some background texture. ‘The Big Sea’ in the title was actually John Coltrane (Big ‘C’) but J didn’t want to allude to that and, one night in a local restaurant eating a seafood salad, I found a whole baby squid in the dish. I wrapped it up, took it home and scanned it for a version of the sleeve that I still like but didn’t make it. As with most of J’s covers I went through lots of versions of things before arriving at something he liked.

The ‘Channel One Suite’ side was always going to be a mixing desk, initially echoing the receding lines of the ‘Diabolus’ cover and still not a million miles away from it. I experimented with having faders in circular formations and a load of different things before we were both happy with the designs.

The Cinematic Orchestra ‘Diabolus EP’

RELEASED: 1998 (F&F) / Jan 1999 (NT)
FORMAT: 12″
LABEL: FORM & FUNCTION / NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: F&F06 / ZEN1277
DESIGN: Openmind
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Form & Function 12″ version with full picture sleeve, Ninja Tune version had a housebag
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Jason Swinscoe used to work in the Ninja Tune office handling exports and distribution and, when he DJed out, he would play lots of quality house with Masters At Work featuring heavily (or so I remember). So it was a great shock to everyone when he arrived with this monster as a potential release. He’d actually made a deal with Form & Function – a German label – for a single, thinking that Ninja wouldn’t be interested and this cover is for that version as Ninja released it in a house bag later on. A logo for this new group was needed and I custom-made lettering for it, not wanting to go the traditional jazz route and do a ‘Blue Note‘.

When Jason was on the phone in the office he used to doodle and his pad and surrounding desk were covered in these odd scribbles, like coral growing and multiplying across the page. When he asked me to do a sleeve I took one of his note books and started using parts of them as graphic material coupled with details of She One paintings who I was collaborating with on other things. J wasn’t really into these, wanting something cleaner and Tom Chant, his …

DJ Vadim ‘USSR: Life From the Other Side’ LP / ‘Instrumentals’ LP / merchandise

UK LP cover

N. America LP cover

N. America CD cover

Instrumentals LP labels

Breakin Point magazine advert

RELEASED: Aug 1999 / Nov 1999
FORMAT: 2xLP / CD / 2xLP
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN44 / ZENCD44 / ZEN44INST
DESIGN: Openmind / Delta
PHOTOGRAPHY: Delta
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: LP & CD covers are different for both Euro and US releases
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY / instr ninjatune page / BUY

Vadim has always been keen on representing the four main elements of Hip Hop in his productions and graffiti appears on his sleeves but never in a conventional way. For this project I had met the previous year with Dutch graffiti legend Delta on tour with Coldcut and wanted to collaborate with him as I loved his work. I wanted him to build something in 3D as he had started to make interlocking constructions from MDF of his more architectural drawings.

I had also shied away from explicitly using Russian constructivist imagery and colours with Vadim before this because I didn’t want this to be viewed as the angle that everyone remembered him by. For this though – his third album on Ninja – I decided to relent on it, partly because Vadim was now established and partly because Delta’s style was similar to constructivism and fitted this mold with ease.

For the first single I used Delta’s sketch for his construct in the form of a blueprint from a drawing board. On the second single I featured the bare MDF construct made for the front cover and for the album the …

DJ Vadim ‘It’s Obvious’ / ‘The Terrorist’ / ‘English Breakfast’

RELEASED: August 1999
FORMAT: 12″
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN1283 / ZEN1283US
DESIGN: Delta & Openmind
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: There are two versions of this sleeve, the European one and the US one, the colours on the US are inverted from the Euro version. The UK release has The Terrorist on the flip and the US version has English Breakfast .
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune.net page / US ninjatune.net page

The Terrorist was fast becoming an anthem of sorts after airing on the B side of the US 12″ of Friction so it was coupled with It’s Obvious in the UK for the second single from the album. This cover featured the unpainted 3D model Delta had made from his drawing and was again inverted for the US sleeve which, again, featured a different B side.

DJ Vadim ‘Friction’ / ‘Raps Don’t Grow On Trees’ / ‘The Terrorist’

RELEASED: April 1999
FORMAT: 12″
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN1279
DESIGN: Delta & Openmind
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: There are two versions of this sleeve, the European one and the US one, the colours on the US are inverted from the Euro version. The UK release has ‘Raps Don’t Grow On Trees’ on the flip and the US version has ‘The Terrorist’.
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

This was the beginning of my collaboration with Dutch artist Boris Tellegen aka DELTA whose work I’d been following in various European graffiti magazines for the last few years. On Coldcut’s ‘Let Us Play’ tour in 1997 we stopped in Amsterdam and I went to Fat Beats looking for records and T-shirts. Inside not only did they have shirts with his designs on but also a custom-made Delta ‘shelf’ on the wall with a 3D cut out of his name. Talking to them it turned out that his studio was close by and they arranged a meet up later that evening.

As agreed he turned up and as soon as I walked into his studio I saw a Gundam model, a Spawn toy, a giant red and white canvas of his work and it all clicked. I was looking for a piece to buy and the red and white canvas was absolutely perfect, “but it is just a study”, he said – “well that’s good enough for me”, I said and we struck a deal there and then for it. It took several more …

The Herbaliser ‘Very Mercenary’

RELEASED: April 1999
FORMAT: 2xLP / CD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN41 / ZENCD41 / ZEN41P
DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: US 12″ promo featuring selections from the LP
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Going for a Saul Bass vibe here, all overlapping lines and roughly cut letters, as well as hard contrast on the images, giving it a movie title sequence look with various ‘scenes’ from the individual tracks featured. In my opinion the front graphic works best as a portrait image, see the poster design for it, also for some reason we did a meter long shop poster for the release, possibly because the Herbaliser logo was long and thin for this album.

The Herbaliser ‘Road Of Many Signs’ / ‘Moon Sequence’

'Moon Sequence' side

'Moon Sequence' label

'Moon Sequence' detail

'Road Of Many Signs' side

RELEASED: Feb 1999
FORMAT: 12″ / CDS / DL
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN1278 / ZENCDS78 / ZENDNLS78
DESIGN: Openmind
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

I always preferred both the song and the sleeve side of ‘Moon Sequence’ over the more radio-friendly ‘Road Of Many Signs’. Being a space-themed track it was easy to come up with imagery to suit and I decided to use the landing pattern of the Moon capsule as a kind of dance-step routine across the lunar night sky. The astronaut’s fat boots also looked a little like giant shell toes so the ‘Breakin’ In Space’ line was added to further push home the point. The A side over was made up, literally, of many signs I’d snapped on my travels around the world at that point including N. America and Japan.

Small Fish With Spine ‘Ultimate Sushi’

RELEASED: 1999
FORMAT: LP / CD / CD promo
LABEL: OXIDE / Oxygen Music Works
CAT No.: OXIDE LP1 / OXIDE CD1
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: unknown
EXTRA ZEN: Discogs page

A very minimal, Japanese inspired cover in all senses of the word. The chopstick sleeves were bought back from a Japanese tour and the type was placed vertically with brushstroke-like fonts to mimic the eastern way of writing. The promo is the real deal though, I handmade a set of covers, printed both sides of an A4 sheet of raw, textured paper, and then folded them around the CDs which sat in linen sleeves. These were then sealed with a sticker with the Small Fish With Spine logo stamped on it in red ink, and housed in a transparent sleeve to protect them – a lovely item.

DK ‘Solid Steel tour mix’ SSDK01

RELEASED: 1999
FORMAT: 2xCD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: SSDK01
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: n/a
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Only sold on tour at Coldcut shows but later made available on the 20 years of Solid Steel DVD
EXTRA ZEN: Discogs page

From DK: About to tour North American with Coldcut in 2000, I wanted to put together a promo CD that I could give away on the tour and thus took three sections from some of my favourite Solid Steel shows that year and put them together on 2 CDs. Among the usual DK mix of old and new, are Yush 2K – Fade Away (which made the short list for Now, Listen), The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds given an excellent remix by Danny Tenaglia, Big Dada Allstars with their Planet Rock homage “Showtime”, Little Richard and Love on the breaks and beats. On the reggae front, Merciless, Cutty Ranks, Sean Paul, Burning Spear and King Tubby all make an appearance, Club favourites of the time were Solomon Funk, Re-Return of the Original Artform and Ozomatli (both getting the Cut Chemist lick) and 7 inch pressure from Eddie Warner and the Backyard Heavies.

Solid Steel only had a basic logo at that time and, needing some packaging, I enrolled the skills of Strictly Kev to design the artwork for the double CD. The starting point was an Audio Obstacle Course Stereo test record we both had and the design became a template for the real series that followed. Dubbed …

Coldcut ‘Let Us Replay’

10" cover with a space for the 7"

7" cover

12x12" insert, 10" reverse, 7" reverse

12" x 12" insert with space for a 10" + 7" sleeve

12" x 12" insert + 10" placed on top

12" x 12" insert + 10" + 7" placed on top

RELEASED: Jan 1999
FORMAT: 2xLP / 2xCD / 7″ / 10″ / 12″ promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN39 / ZENCD39 / ZEN739 / ZEN1039 / ZEN1239R
DESIGN: Openmind / Hex
PHOTOGRAPHY: n/a
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Promo 12″ featuring 4 cuts
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

As I remember this was a bit of a rush job as Japan wanted a cover image months before the release so I had to mock something up quickly from the Let Us Play artwork. I chose a picture puzzle with moving pieces to show a reconfiguring on the previous record as these were all remixes mainly. There was a nice thing with one side of the LP insert where, if you bought the accompanying 10″ and 7″ remixes, you could place them on top to form the image of Matt and Jon. I’m pretty certain this was me ripping off something Trevor Jackson had done with a Fridge 12″ and 7″.

Hexstatic (Hex had been disbanded and partly reborn as Hexstatic after ‘Timber’) remodeled the Matt and Jon figures and helped a lot to make the cover better than I could have done at the time but really this was just a rehash of elements from the graphics generated before.

Neotropic ‘Ultra Freaky Orange’

psyche type idea used on label and under CD

unused advert design

RELEASED: Jan 1999
FORMAT: 12″ / CDS
LABEL: NTONE
CAT No.: NTONE29 / NTONECDS29
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: Openmind
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

The photos on this were taken on the Bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan by randomly shooting a whole film out of the window, winding it back to the beginning and shooting it all again. After rotating the camera 90 degrees. Four times.

The Neotropic logo in the nine squares was inspired when I went to an Art Nouveau exhibition at the V&A and thought that some of the fonts used resembled circuit boards. I remember drawing a rough sketch for the logo in the cafe while it was still in my head and I always liked it although it works better in the square format than in a straight line.

This EP was a mass of contradictions as far as the visuals were concerned as Riz had sampled the 60’s UFO theme – hence the title with the same initials – and wanted a psychedelic look to it. I played around with various things including a version of the underground UFO club logo and some swirly black and white Op-art-type graphics (visible under the CD single tray). I also had an orange in the original which was pretty obvious but looked nice and, coupled with the Japanese images and the circuit board logo, it all looked a bit odd. Ultimately the images won as we both liked them and I still count this …