Good interview with Pen & Pixel Graphics, who were responsible for a bunch of classic Rap-A-Lot/Suave House/No Limit/Cash Money album covers. link via Cocaine Blunts (via @killiterati)
A: What was your philosophy for Pen & Pixel?
S: Well, at the very, very beginning, I noticed that people had not really got a good understanding of Photoshop and what you could do with it. People were paying a huge amount of money to go and have themselves in front of a Bentley, and hire models, and rent jewelry, and go to a location… I also had a background in photography, and before Pen & Pixel, your photoshoot could be 15 to 20 000 $ just to get everything right. And there were still not the dimension, the bling-bling, that was limited on what you can do with it. So what I said is “Why do all that when we can actually do that at one-tenth of the price? We have everything: we have pictures of Rolls Royces, pictures of girls, pictures of diamonds, we have all this stuff, including their clothes!” If they didn’t want to buy clothes, all we can do is photograph the face, and we will have a body model, mimick up their bodies and we would put it in a place where you would never know the difference. And it worked. That formula worked very very well.
Pen & Pixel album covers were sooo terrible, they were partial inspiration for me to stick with graphic design major and rid hip hop of sub-par graphic design. I must admit that some covers are so bad they become funny…
I’m glad that these covers inspired you to further your education. It’s kind of ironic that I had two degrees in Communication and graphics from The Chicago Art Institute and from Parson School of Design, graduated top of my class, got a job at a New your Ad agency (JWT), and struggled to make it for years….many years. Then one day, I was called out to Houston by my brother to help with some music video and album cover designs for Rap-a-lot records…and WHAM…a few thousand album covers later and 11 years of my life….Pen & Pixel!
Amazing what you can do when you step out of the mold making machine!
SB
I thought the Pen & Pixie Brothers committed suicide after getting caught for embezzlement?
Strange.
LAWL, FAGS!
[...] cherry-on-top is the cover art’s ode to Pen & Pixel & the golden era of southern rap. Makes me want to break a blunt to my old Master P “TRU” [...]