Bleeding Heart Pigeons - Is

Having worked with Little Green Cars their manager approached us and asked us to design album artwork for another band he managed. The Bleeding Heart Pigeons had been signed to Virgin Records and were ready to launch their debut album ‘Is’. The album centres on the theme of isolation and lead singer Mícheál Keating had produced a series of beautiful illustrations around that theme which the band hoped to use in the album artwork.

It was our challenge to figure out how to use the illustrations and to work on the layout of the vinyl sleeve and booklets. We used the illustrations at scale and were keen not to lessen their impact by cluttering the sleeve with other graphics. With this in mind we kept the front cover clear of type and used a sticker to hold the band and album name. Graphics on the reverse were designed to complement the album artwork and were kept minimal.

In order to ensure photography of the band reflected the design of the sleeve we art directed a shoot by Matthew Thompson and asked Mícheál to illustrate over it. Two further EPs were designed using complementary illustrations to create a strong set.