JAKE LERMAN
ART DIRECTION
& DESIGN

Island Records is one of the big 4. With humble beginnings in Jamaica, the label went on to Britain and international acclaim with releases by genre defining artists like Bob Marley, Grace Jones, Amy Winehouse and countless others.

To honor their 60th birthday, the label paired with Dolby to take over their immersive audio storefront on Broadway for a weeklong series of events.

I helped produce a comparative hardback book of the 60 album covers that defined the label as well as environmental graphics for the event itself. This included a wheat-pasted snipe-wall of vintage island show posters and a video forest of the content from the companion book.

The idea of summing up a  label like Island Records in 60 pages is a fools challenge.  Let alone trying to whittle down that depth of visual history to a few select piece of artwork.

With that high bar as our goal, I built out a grid system that allowed for due credit to be given to the creatives who made the work while putting the emphasis on the full bleed renderings of the covers themselves. With a nod to the island records rainbow spine and a embossed mark on a linen wrap. We ended up with a classic piece that tells a timeless story. 

Dolby built an immersive space in Soho complete with full room projection mapping, immersive light installations and their world renown audio technology. It made perfect sense for this to be the location to explore 60 years of Island’s catalog. 

Through digital and physical installation work I helped extend the design system we created for the book into a multi-tiered manhattan playhouse that served as the backdrop for a week of concerts and events open to the public.