Never Break The Chain
A limited-edition vinyl set celebrating Fleetwood Mac’s legacy.
Scope: Packaging Design
Industry: Music, Entertainment
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Celebrate the artistic legacy of Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks, designing a collector’s edition vinyl set of 3 albums: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk.
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This set is made for collectors, music enthusiasts, and of course, fans of Fleetwood Mac.
With Never Break The Chain being a limited-edition set, I was able to make artistic decisions without being limited by what is practical for mass production.
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To honor the band's legacy, the lyric 'never break the chain' became a guiding theme throughout the collection. The records are bound together in a piano hinge binding of bamboo and faux leather, forming a chain that keeps them together. The lyric books for each record are made with an accordion fold, adding another chain.
Stevie Nicks' signature earthy style informs both the materials and graphics. The design system layers corresponding animal imagery over warm, grainy photographs.
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The collection needed to pull from Fleetwood Mac’s ethos, and then add a new dimension. Drawing upon textures and colors from the original albums, I explored themes of ethereal nature to enhance the overall aesthetic.
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The covers of each album needed to stand out on their own, while looking coherent together.
Each album is represented by a winged animal: for Fleetwood Mac, a bird; for Rumours, a dragonfly. With Tusk, the only double album in the collection, the system introduces two animals. A butterfly keeps the design on-theme, while a dog's sharp teeth symbolize aggression and experimentation in the album. This choice also references the original album art, which sports a dog.
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To channel Nicks' ephemeral aesthetic, the record sleeves are printed on transparent vellum. For imagery, I recorded myself dancing to a track from each record, which became the design for the sleeve. A corresponding song lyric helps ground each sleeve to its record.
I produced the following images using an iPhone and Adobe Photoshop.
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Aside from the artwork, the packaging for the collection is also guided by the “chain” motif. The records are bound together in a piano hinge binding of bamboo and faux leather, forming a chain that keeps them together.
Flip through the collection as you would a book; each 'page' sports symbolic graphics on the front and a tracklist on the back. At the end, four lyric books are tucked into neat pockets for easy transportation.
