Weightless Album
Client:
Marconi Union
(Swinburne Student Project)
Weightless by Marconi Union is considered the world’s most relaxing song. Through a collaborative process with a psychoacoustic specialist, Marconi Union pieced together a soundscape that triggers a relaxation response on a physiological level; your heart rate drops, breathing eases, and blood pressure lowers. Interestingly, it also induces relaxation at a chemical level by reducing the levels of cortisol in the bloodstream. Therefore, one must try very hard to feel stressed while listening to the album.
The 12” design package need to comprise of the following elements:
12" album gatefold sleeve: The album format was to be a gatefold that has two sleeves that will hold two 12" vinyl records. The final design needed to flow across all of the surfaces i.e. front, back and the inside gatefold double spread surfaces.
2 x vinyl label designs: The 12" album package also needed to include the design of the round labels for the two vinyl records. Each of the two designs neared to be different.
You can listen to the track here: Weightless
Design Brief:
Design Outcome:
Digital Collage was selected for its ability to convey the unique elements of the album, while speaking directly to the artists’ compositional approach.
To create the album’s soundscapes, Marconi Union carefully and deliberately layered sonic textures and tones with the explicit purpose of eliciting relaxation. Similarly, digital collage is characterised by the carefully considered placement of textures and hues to create a composition.
An important consideration for the redesign was appealing to the breadth of the album’s target audience. Instead of a particular persona or age group, the target audience is a particular way of life; those who practice meditation, yoga, and mindfulness (or those who assist others in these practices), as well as those looking to manage stress, anxiety, or insomnia. As such, the album’s design appears relatively gender and age-neutral and instead focuses on communicating the same sense of weightless ease, a portal to a state of calm and relaxation, as the music it enfolds.
Thus, the depiction of a dawn skyscape embodies the dichotomy of opposites, of entering a space in a state of tension and leaving in a state of repose. The transition from night to day across the back and front covers symbolises finding life’s constants, its certainties, while also providing visual contrast between the covers. Tones of pink and purple help to cultivate a sense of calm and spaciousness, while offering the viewer an invitation to breathe with greater ease and ensure they are welcomed. Lastly, the design of the album’s labels strengthens the sense of peering through a portal to a dreamy place of relaxation and freedom.
