Throughout my career, I feel like I’ve been luckier than most in terms of what kinds of projects I’ve been given the opportunity to work on. My work has always been pretty colorful and bombastic, which of course tends to attract gigs that are generally looking for.. well, colorful, bombastic art—but even so, it’s rare that I get asked to come onboard for something that feels like such a perfect match that I simply can’t say no to it. And when Mondo reached out to me about creating the art for the Thor: Love and Thunder soundtrack, I immediately knew it was one of those rare opportunities.

I really wanted to capture the look of 80’s sci-fi/fantasy poster illustrations and metal albums of that era, and I was thrilled to be able to go all out for this one. Huge thanks to my art director Mo Shafeek for allowing me to let loose here—not only on the actual illustrations but also by letting me try my hand at the actual graphic design, typesetting, and product development. This project would have gone off the rails if it wasn’t for his herculean efforts bringing it all together.

Here are the original concept sketches I sent in:

As you can see, most of it stayed the same, but as with all licensed projects certain adjustments needed to be made in order to stay within legal guidelines. (Also my dreams of a fully holographic/rainbow pressed vinyl weren’t possible, which, fair. 😂) Overall though, I was very happy to find out that my idea for heart-shaped labels was possible and the final product came out even better than I could have imagined!

Funnily enough, it was actually the corner box that I went through the most turmoil with—I originally did a whole separate version that was more of an anime/comic book look, but ended up deciding that I didn’t like it, so I scrapped it and redid the whole thing from scratch. I didn’t even end up sending this version in because I wasn’t happy with it, but I thought I’d show it to you guys here just so you can get an idea of how neurotic I can be sometimes you gotta try something out to know whether or not it’ll work, and sometimes you end up wasting a bunch of time. Happens to the best of us, I think. 🥲

The team at Mondo also worked their magic with the labels I sent over, as well—it’s nuts how much additional work gets done in-house even after artists have submitted the “final art”. Their attention to detail is definitely off the charts, but I was happy to be able to at least provide the base design:

Thanks so much for reading all the way through! If you’re interested in picking up the album, it’s now officially available here.

MONDO @MondoNews

Our MCU soundtrack series continues with THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER on vinyl, the score by @m_giacchino and @namicomposer and the art by @heyjenbartel. 🌈 ⚡ON SALE NOW⚡: mondorecordshop.com

5:00 PM ∙ Sep 28, 2022

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