IQ — The Lost Attic
The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.
The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.
Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!
Dear visitor of The Art Corner!
Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)
The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.
Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.
- Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
- Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
- Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
- Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
- Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
- Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
- Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?
Mattias Norén
IQ — The Lost Attic (Giant Electric Pea - GEPCD 1024, 1999)
Design
Graphic design by Tony Lythgoe
Cover illustration by Peter Nicholls
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 3.7
Comments
A cooperation between two great artists. A typical Peter Nicholls illustration, refined by IQ's new graphical genius Tony Lythgoe. A very nice job by both of them.
The best part of the whole package is The Lost Attic logo type. I actually think it's the first time I have seen that someone has done a logo of the title of a record, and the design of it is outstanding.
It would have been great if the IQ-logo had been in the same colour as the title. This red beveled style looks a bit too modern and overworked for this kind of classic album. The booklet contains no less than 20 pages with lyrics and a lot of interesting information about the songs.
In my opinion, Lythgoe has used a little too many colours for these pages. But on the whole, once again, IQ give us a very pleasant album for your eyes as well as for your ears.
