Pendragon — Once Upon A Time In England
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
Pendragon — Once upon a time in England, Volume II (Toff Records - MOB7CD, 1999)
Design
Graphic design by Geoff Chandler
Cover illustration by Simon Williams
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 3.5
Comments
Just like IQ's The Lost Attic, this is a cooperation between two great artists. The illustration is of course done by Simon Williams. Anything else would be a surprise when we talk about Pendragon. The layout and the graphic design is done by Geoff Chandler, the man behind the artwork for Jadis.
There are two volumes of this CD. I chose to show Volume II because I like it a little better. Actually the only thing that differs is the colour of the frame. On Volume I it is blue/purple instead of green.
Volume I
Volume II
The illustration is a lot simpler than we are used to from Williams, but actually I think it gives the cover more identity than for example the cover for The Masquerade Overture. The booklets are 20 pages each and contain a lot of information of the songs.
The layout of the booklet works OK, but it's not the most interesting I have seen.
Overall, two nice looking rarities albums.
