“The Cool” Vinyl Package
“Shed no tears, when we’re not here.
and keep your faith as we chase...
The Cool”
— Lupe Fiasco, “The Coolest”
This is a reimagined vinyl package for Lupe Fiasco’s magnum opus, “The Cool”. Throughout the album, Lupe talks about the many ills that plague not just inner city communities (especially Chicago where Lupe is from), but the world at large; issues like consumerism, gang violence, child soldier warfare, gun violence, and the “gangster” image as a whole. However, there’s also a meta narrative throughout the album that involves two characters that Lupe pins as responsible for a majority of these ills: “The Streets” (shown on the front) and “The Game” (shown on the back).
Design wise, I chose a very abstract approach instead of a more representational one. While I knew off the bat that I wanted to illustrate The Streets and The Game, as I continued in my design process, I was also challenged to illustrate the world their chaos has created and the socio-philosophical inferences their existence makes about the human condition.