Album Cover
Taylor Swift, 1989 album cover re-design.
Creative Rationale
‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album, released in 2014. While Taylor started transitioning away from country in her previous album ‘Red’, ‘1989’ is her first fully pop album and marks a significant shift in her music. Named after her birth year, the title ‘1989’ symbolises the rebirth of Taylor’s image and artistry as she severed ties with her country roots.
I chose this album for the redesign because I think it is a great example of a pop album, and one of Taylor Swift’s most significant albums to date. While she definitely had success before ‘1989’, I believe that the commercial success of this album is what lead to her becoming one of the biggest artists of the decade. On a more personal note, I also dislike the original album cover for ‘1989’. I understand the concept behind it, but aesthetically I think it is one of her weakest and that is why I wanted to give it a refresh.
As in Taylor’s previous albums, in ‘1989’ she reflects a lot on past romantic relationships. However, in this album Taylor writes from a more mature perspective. Rather than villanise her exes, as in previous albums, ‘1989’ reflects on Taylor’s previous relationships in a wistful and nostalgic light. She also writes about her relationship with herself, exploring themes of self-confidence and self-reliance.
For this limited-edition release, I decided to use the outer and inner gatefold to express two different aspects of the album:
The outer gatefold symbolises the contrasting themes of excitement and anxiety expressed in the album. I used a bold, contrasting colour palette to represent these opposing feelings, as well as the highs and lows of the relationships explored. The busy and colourful visuals also express the fun, energetic style of the music. The bright, multicoloured lights in the background symbolized both the bright lights of New York City, the setting of the album, as well as the flashes of the paparazzi. In ‘Out Of The Woods’ and ‘I Know Places’, Taylor writes about her struggles to maintain a new relationship when everyone’s watching and commenting on her life, while ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Blank Space’ comment on the ways the media perceives her. To create the imagery, I froze flowers in a block of ice, then photographed it on top of multicoloured fairy lights. The flowers in the ice are confined, symbolising the confines of the constant surveillance and scrutiny Taylor was under at the time as well as the confines of being in a struggling relationship.
The inner gatefold symbolises the themes of self-reliance and freedom expressed in the album. Each song in the album has a secret message hidden in the liner notes, with the final message being ‘She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything’. That is the sentiment I was inspired by for this image. I wanted softer lighting and a lighter, more minimal colour palette to convey the calm after the storm. Water was an important element of my concepts for this album. The final track ‘Clean’ uses the imagery of rain and storms to symbolise going through pain and coming out the other side stronger and more self-assured. While previously the flowers were confined in ice, they are now free, floating in the water. The ethereal, dreamy imagery of the inside gatefold also connects to the wistful and nostalgic view on relationships she expresses in songs such as ‘Wildest Dreams’.
I decided to use flowers as the subject in my photography because they act as both a symbol of romance and of a relationship. Flowers are a common gift given to a lover on a special occasion or anniversary. Flowers are also living things that, similar to a relationship, will die if they aren’t nurtured. Taylor uses flowers to symbolise her failed relationship in ‘Clean’, in which she writes ‘the flowers we grew together died of thirst’.
For the outer gatefold, I froze a selection of flowers in a block of ice. To photograph it, I placed the ice block on top of a makeshift lightbox with some fairy lights underneath.
For the inner gatefold, I suspended some flowers from a bamboo rod in a tank of water. I placed the tank on top of the lightbox and set up a white backdrop. I had someone drop small amounts of milk into the water using an eye dropper while I took the photos to get the cloudy effect.
