MeMag - Me Magazine

These are some of the other photos I took and also considered for the cover, either for the front or the back. I suppose anyone sensible would have saved them for a possible future cover, or to sell off later. But when people ask me if they can have such leftovers, I usually hear myself say “ok”. So in this case I’m including no less than 40 additional images with the cover. The artist can use them for promotion or whatever he wants. Fair enough really. He probably hasn’t got a lot of money right now. I’ll charge him double when he is a millionaire and has his own reality-tv show. Kind of tedious to scan that many photos and spot off the dust tho.

P.S. If anyone knows how to get thumbnails to be clickable and open a new window hugging a photo (in WordPress) then I want to know.

At the moment I am completely out of ideas of my own. We had a brainstorm yesterday and several great ideas came up. None of them were mine. I now have to figure out how to make one of these ideas come to life. Quite frankly I am not comfortable doing things that I didn’t suggest myself. Especially since these ideas all seem to demand a fair ammount of equipment that I simply do not have. And there doesn’t seem to be a budget for any equipment rental or model salary or anything like that. I now have to find a studio that I can borrow for free. Or at least a portable studio flash with a battery pack. I guess I have to learn how to use a telephone to charm people. I shudder at the thought of this.

Selected rejected drafts: Top row: More vampy takes on the make-up vanity theme. Bottom row: My attempts at doing something with some tiny plastic baby dolls that they wanted on the cover.

So I arranged another photoshoot with the girls. By then it was decided that they wanted a theme of vanity, so during the following week I made several cover drafts based on the photos I had shot of them putting on make-up and jewlery. Here is the one I liked best myself. Although it probably looks more like a cover for a slightly occult version of Carmen than a grungy rock cover. Rejected.

This was my initial idea for a CD cover for the debut album of an all girl rock band. They felt however, that it wasn’t rock’n rolly enough to represent them. Me, I think it works well. Also for me, it felt like a thing that was meant to be… I walked by this place and saw the wallpaper and red couch through the window. And it turned out that this bar locale is owned by a guy who is one of this very album’s producer’s best friends.

Had a similar experience last year with this cover… I could think of only one café in Oslo that had the right wooden walls and the right kind of evening light coming in the windows and it turned out that that place was owned by the album producer’s neighbor. Sometimes things just come together. Except with this cover, it didn’t after all.

Here, to kick off the Rejected-category, is an early cover I made for Mats Dahlberg. This one I rejected myself. It started out as a vintage circus poster but quickly turned into something that looks like the cover of a childrens album. Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn’t fit the music.

This was one of Dahlberg’s own drawings, to which I added the background, shading and light cone.

Why is it that almost every time someone hires me to design or photograph something for them because “we have seen what you do and we love it” they always still seem to want to do all of the design themselves? Why why why?
Why hire a designer and then not listen to a word he’s saying? First they start off by saying that I have complete freedom to interpret or invent or do whatever it is that I do. Then a few days later, as I am well into working on this, they start adding little extra conditions, like for instance… the photos all have to feature them standing on one leg with paper bags on their heads and toothbrushes sticking out of their asses. Or some other really bad idea. Actually that’s probably a bad example because I would love to see a cover like that and so would you, I know you would. But for now, let’s just that represent a very typical everyday bad idea.

“It’s not usually what I do”, I say diplomatically… “Don’t you think that people standing on one leg with paper bags on their heads and dental hygine products protruding from their posteriors would look sort of odd on an album cover for a collection of ’50s love songs?” This is the point where they always look at me like I have just plopped out of my mothers womb right there on the carpet in front of them. Innocent, naive with very poor skills regarding how to behave in public. “It has to look professional”, they lecture. “Toothbrushes are very popular. Most people own at least one! Adding a few toothbrushes to the record cover would make that record equally popular”. At this point I have usually resorted to insecure smiling and nodding in fear of getting my liver cut out and eaten by the obviously insane person in front of me.

And these little nuggets of new criteria always seem to come to me after I have already spent days setting something different up. Like yesterday, on the end of my photo-shoot for the cover of a certain album. I pack my gear and get ready for departure. We all shake hands… and then it comes: “Right… we have to talk soon. We have to decide what we are going to do for the cover!” “Er… ” , I say. “Isn’t this the cover”? A smile, like a child has just spoken and said something cute yet stupid… “Oh no… this cannot be the cover. Think… think paper bags! And toothbrushes! I’ll call you early on Sunday and we’ll discuss that”.
By then, of course, my head will have exploded and I will be completely dead.