Big Mono - Forked Tongue Artwork Reflection

With the release of our first single, we knew that we would need some eye catching artwork that gave people a feel for what Big Mono is all about. We approached Erin Harris a fellow student, studying design because we had seen some stuff she was working on last trimester, we liked her style and general aesthetic. We also liked Erin’s personality and sense of humour. We knew she would understand what we were trying to do.

The original idea was to do an EP titled My Wife On Drugs and that informed some of our artistic choices in terms of the lyrics for the song and the design of the artwork. Although being from a rock background we all assumed doing 4 songs would be pretty straight forward but once we started constructing the scratch track for the first song and developing sounds for it. We realised that 4 songs were a bit ambitious so we narrowed that down to one song. We all thought that one really good song would be better than 4 rushed songs. However, the original artistic concept carried over.

When we first described our concept to Erin her idea was to use vintage 50’s housewife imagery but to distort it a bit and add a modern logo. We liked her take on things and after creating a Pinterest mood board with some ideas. We gave her a large amount of creative freedom because we completely trusted Erin to come up with something unique. We went about making the song, sending her updates as the song developed and she sent us updates as her idea for the artwork developed. This allowed for us to stay in tune with each other and to feel as though we are working on the same project.

Having only one song meant that we could not call the release My Wife On Drugs and the release needed to be the song title, so we let Erin know that the title would be Forked Tongue and to run with that idea but that the original concept was still good, we discussed incorporating a face with a forked tongue into the image somewhere originally thinking along the lines of the housewife in the kitchen and I suggested that there could be a cheeky boy in the back ground with a forked tongue or possibly a face hidden in the shadows.

What Erin came back with actually caught me by surprise but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it. She extended the concept of the 50’s housewife to the concept of the nuclear family and distorted the image hiding a little-forked tongue on the youngest boy. She said that she wanted to distort the image as if you were watching a video in slow motion, with the concept that the tongue is a glitch. To me this is implying something esoteric or supernatural is happening in the household and is somehow caught by the camera. This concept really fits with the theme of the song which is about someone who has been seduced into darkness.

The cursed tape from the ring has a similiar idea to this

Erin put placeholder fonts on the image and then we all spent time going through different fonts on DaFont. There was a lot of back and forth until we found fonts we all liked Adam felt like the text for forked tongue should be red because the black font was lost in the image. I felt that the Big Mono font could be a light green using the colours that were already in the image. We used these images as a guide to match a light green and dark red I think it worked really well.

The white in the logo was much more clinical than the white in the image so Erin attempted some filters to soften the white which darkened the green then suddenly she said I’ve got it and posted the picture with the logo just right. I was 100% happy and Adam still wanted one small thing. A hint of red on the boy's tongue. Erin added that final little touch and then we were done. Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference.

Here is the Final Verson

Once the artwork was done and the song was completed we chose colours on the band camp site to compliment the cover design. Erin also made a transparent logo for the header. You can see the results and listen to the song here: Big Mono Band Camp