• RELEASED: 29 Oct 2014
• FORMAT: Deluxe box set / LP / 3×10″ / DVD / Cassette / Book
• LABEL: ZTT / Union Square Music
• CAT No.: SALVOFLBX001
• DESIGN: Openmind / Philip Marshall
• WRITING: Paul Morley / Ian Peel
• PHOTOGRAPHY: John Stoddart / Peter Ashworth / AJ Barratt / Anton Corbijn
• ILLUSTRATION: Lo Cole / Anne Yvonne Gilbert
• SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Funded by fans via Pledge Music, 2000 sets were produced with over half of those going to pledgers before the remainder were offered via conventional channels.
• EXTRA ZEN: BUY

The opportunity seemed too good to be true – getting to co-design a deluxe box set of a pivotal album from my youth and a chance to use unseen interviews and visual material I’d been collecting for the best part of a decade. The request arrived early in January of 2014 from Union Square who would be producing the set with material licensed from ZTT and releasing it via Pledge Music, a kind of Kickstarter for new releases.

A workload of Ian Peel’s musical and written curation would be supplemented by design and graphic input from myself and Philip Marshall in the form of a box that would house a remastered replica of the original LP, three 10″ discs, a DVD, a cassette, three prints, a book and more. Without any confirmed track list I sat down to sketch out some ideas for this based on existing designs from the 1984 time period and started creating …

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• RELEASED: 19 April 2014
• FORMAT: 12″
• LABEL: SONY/ LEGACY
• CAT No.: ZEN12232
• DESIGN: Openmind / Cally @ Antar
• ILLUSTRATION: Andy Dog / Openmind
• SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Billed as a ‘GIANT2FACED12INCH’ the sleeve was supposed to open at the top but due to a cock up that none of us spotted it opened from the side.
• EXTRA ZEN: BUY

I was pretty excited when Matt Johnson got in touch to ask about the possibility of licensing my version of ‘GIANT’ for a The The vs DJ Food double A side 12″ on Record Store Day and then asked me to design one side of the sleeve as well. The brief was simple, the front was his brother, Andy ‘Dog’ Johnson‘s shouting face image from the cover of the American issue of the ‘Soul Mining’ LP and I was to do my interpretation for the reverse. OK, so a shouting face, fairly obviously Matt’s, to compliment Andy’s vision, how best to go about this? I didn’t want to ape his style as that would be pointless but there had to be some visual connection so I decided to use the same colour palette.

I’d remembered an image of Matt shouting/singing from the Infected video that was featured in the The The songbook as a still, taken straight from the TV by the looks of it and so scanned that as the basis of my version. The head was facing the opposite direction from Andy’s so this was a good start and …

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Custom made Serato controller record from 12InchSkinz

Custom made Serato controller record from 12InchSkinz

Every band and artist sampled on the 'Paul's Boutique' album

Spring tour dates

French tour poster

Australian tour poster

Original mix 'cover' • illust: Jim Mahfood colour: Openmind

• RELEASED: 2012 / 2013
• FORMAT: Mix / Tour posters
• LABEL: n/a
• CAT No.: n/a
• DESIGN: Openmind / Jim Mahfood
• EXTRA ZEN: LISTEN

The reconstruction of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album that I made with DJ Cheeba and DJ Moneyshot needed a graphic so I commissioned Jim Mahfood to draw a ‘cover’ for it which I then coloured. When we decided to turn the mix into a live performance I made up an image which featured every artist sampled on the album in a ‘Sgt Peppers’ / ‘Jazz On A Summers Day’ kind of street scene. This was then warped into posters, Facebook timeline photos and even a pair of custom Serato controller discs.

• RELEASED: 21 April 2013
• FORMAT: 12″ / DL / CD promo
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No.: ZEN12318 / ZENDNLS318 / ZENCDS318P
• DESIGN: Openmind / Henry Flint
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

12″ with multi-coloured splatter vinyl with the full mix split into three tracks. The DL and CD promo contain an exclusive bonus remix by 2econd Class Citizen and radio edits of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ and ‘GIANT’ unavailable elsewhere.

• RELEASED: 19th Jan 2012
• FORMAT: 4xLP / CD / Book+CD+Flexi disc / DL / CD promo
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No.: ZEN176 / ZENCD176 / ZENCD176X / ZENDNL176 / ZENCD176P
• DESIGN: Openmind
• ILLUSTRATION: Henry Flint
• PHOTOGRAPHY: Will Cooper-Mitchell
• SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Ten random copies of the 4×12″ were inserted with 12″x12″ artwork containing signed zoetrope prints and collages, all one-offs.
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

I worked with 2000ad artist, Henry Flint on this, a true collaborative effort in every sense. I came up with the concept of a cosmonaut hanging in space, strapped into an unfeasibly large backpack, the kind you could only wear in zero gravity. He was originally to be suspended from the huge cylinder from the ‘Shape Of Things That Hum’ cover but we needed a bottom to the piece.

I asked Henry to illustrate all sorts of protrusions to attach to the image and additional pipes attaching the cosmonaut. In typical Flint style we went way above and beyond and illustrated a whole circular machine! This changed the whole composition as I felt it would be stronger with the cosmonaut suspended in the centre and then set about colouring both elements.

I bounced a myriad of different versions back and forth to gauge his opinion, some very rough and messy, others clean. We both agreed there was something missing at the end and, upon hearing the ‘Colours Beyond Colours’ track from my album, Henry suggested some sort of light beam or prism. …

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inner sleeve detail

2 versions of the Cosmonaut

Original 'Magpie Music' logo

Promo CD on body

• RELEASED: 7 Nov 2011
• FORMAT: 12″ / DL / CD promo
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No.: ZEN12299 / ZENDNLS299 / ZENCDS299P
• DESIGN: Openmind / Henry Flint
• SPOTTERS DELIGHT: 12″ A2 double sided poster cover + full colour inner sleeve.
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

The third in the trilogy of EPs that would make up the album and again it came with a foldout poster as well as inner sleeve, all housed in a plastic sleeve. With this one I now had a nearly formed idea of what the album would be, including Henry Flint‘s Cosmonaut illustration for the LP cover which was previewed here for the first time. I toyed with two versions in different colours, one orange and one white, both of which appeared here but thought the white one was too conventional. By this time I’d also dropped the ‘Stolen Moments’ title and replaced it with ‘The Search Engine’ but wanted to keep the consistency of the previous to sleeves so added the line, ‘This WAS music for…’ before the text. Here was also the first time the ‘Magpie Music’ logo turned up, something that would go on to have an extended life outside of the track it named.

• RELEASED: 21 Feb 2011
• FORMAT: LP / DL
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No.: ZEN171 / ZENDNL171
• DESIGN: Openmind / Ubisoft
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

A refreshed version of the original ‘Splinter Cell’ soundtrack art, this time with the emphasis on red rather than green. I added 3D effects on one inner sleeve and wanted to have the cover printed this way too but Ubisoft vetoed it thinking that people would think it was printed wrongly

• RELEASED: 15 Nov 2010
• FORMAT: CD / DL
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No. ZENCD162 / ZENDNL162
• DESIGN: Openmind
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY / BUY POSTER

Using the complete Ninja Tune, Ntone, Big Dada and Counter Records visual discography that I’d slaved over for the Ninja Tune XX box set as the basis for the artwork was a no-brainer for this 20 year, label-spanning mix by King Cannibal.

The main problem with this release was the mass of writing and publishing credits that had to be laid out inside the CD booklet and the huge tracklist of 256 songs and samples. The promo poster uses this tracklist to visual effect by overlaying it above the darkened discography graphic.

• RELEASED: 14 June 2010
• FORMAT: CD / DL / CD Promo
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No.: ZEN158 / ZENDNL158 / ZENCDP158
• DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
• PHOTOGRAPHY: Openmind
• ILLUSTRATION: Openmind
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

A ‘best of’ for The Herbaliser in the same year that Ninja celebrated their 20th anniversary. Ollie‘s thoughts behind this were for a vintage medicine bottle containing the tonic of the title complete with ornate typography. He even went so far as to buy a load of old bottles of the kind he wanted so that we could illustrate it. I made up a suitable label with ripped and weathered paper, decorative type and borders from the ‘Something Wicked …’ LP which fitted perfectly to the theme.

An initial idea of the bottles with said label as the front cover was ditched, I think because the label was too small to properly be readable. A folded card CD promo then had the label wrapped round it and the bottle on the CD with the centre hole as the entry point for the liquid. At this point though I had to bow out because of continuing work on the Ninja Tune XX box set which swallowed nearly a year of my life design-wise. I got Adam Cain to come in and he bought his graphic and illustrative expertise in to finish the retail CD package (not shown here) taking my initial designs as a starting point.

• RELEASED: 14 Apr 2008
• FORMAT: CD / DL
• LABEL: NINJA TUNE
• CAT No. ZENCD150X / ZENDNL150
• DESIGN: Oscar & Ewan / Openmind
• EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

I only did the on body design for this as Oscar & Ewan had already put together the main compilation art and this was a spin-off promo mix that eventually got an official release. The disc actually features 1000 masks, you can count them.