Special Herbs

Special Herbs, by MF DOOM, is a collection of music I always find myself putting on as background noise. That’s not a negative thing either, with it being instrumental music, it’s doing its job. However, the fact that it has no lyrics or subject matter led to a pretty boring album cover. To redesign it, I wanted to use my typical listening experience as a source of inspiration.

As it turned out, going on late-night drives to clear my head and songs with no inherent meaning lined up pretty closely. All of the photography for this project was taken while listening to the album series. Each photo was taken with the purpose of visualising how the song playing in that moment made me feel.

To fully express the look and feel of each album, I needed to do more than just 3 album covers. I took the opportunity to fully design vinyl record packaging for each, including; a cover, record sleeve, vinyl label, and a tracklist book. I believe that the tracklist books are what helped this project be a success. Each booklet provides details on the samples used to create every track, and which songs have been created using that track as a sample.

This project holds a special place in my portfolio of work. Even though it was created entirely for me, I still couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.