Personal Voice project – Paranoid – Black Sabbath

 

By sharing the same  experiments  I had made for the previous album design for ‘War Pigs’, I came up with a number of possible design covers for for the second Black Sabbath song in this project – ‘Paranoid.’

The themes of ‘Paranoid’ speak of mental health, drug and alcohol abuse ( as the name  suggest) .The themes of this song are rather depressing however the sound of the song is fast and exciting and fairly simple in a musical sense compared to other Black Sabbath material. That being said, it is argubly their most popular song.

 

Using the same photographs I had taken locally in Brighton and the process of  controlled burning on paper, I produced a few different designs.

 

These were intial designs whereby instead of using the band name and song title as done so with other album designs, I selected some of the lyrics. Using the lyrics communicates a more abstract and perhaps unknown message. However, I wished that the design should communicate and identify cover  being that of Black Sabbath; taking the decision to revert back to using band name and song title.

 

Tearing newspaper cut out letters to form the song name and band name. additionally, once having cut out the letters, I began to tear small areas of the words that break up the main outline of the letter. This was to add a textural quality add to relate to the themes of the song-of being paranoid; the tearing and crumbling effects of drugs and depression that  may follow.

 

 

The presence of two hand is an eerie image; as though they belong to someone who is feeling isolated or trapped and are crying out for help ( As the lyrics read ” Can you help me?”)

 

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