Here Today... Gone To Hell!

(http://www.tomamusica.com/caratulas/G/Guns-And-Roses-Appetite-For-Destruction-Del-1987-Delantera.jpg)

I have looked at that album cover and cross with the Skulls literally hundreds of times in seven years but never saw this.

I mean I have been a "proper" fan of GNR since 2001 but I was wearing a t-shirt of the appetite cover to work one day last week and someone asked what each skull meant. I said it was one skull for each member of the appetite line up. And then I actually looked at the t-shirt and realised that Axl is in the middle and Slash and Izzy is the spine of the band and Duff and Steven are on another level.

what do people think ?

I don't think that their placement is meant to be symbolic of their place in the band in any way, if that's what you're asking...  If anything, it balances out well and looks good the way it is, because Steven and Duff both had blond hair, and Slash and Izzy black, with the red-head right in the middle. 

(http://i33.tinypic.com/2dspc1w.jpg)

line - in this design line is not only an organizer, but also a design itself. note the border of the banners, and of course, the nice designs inside the cross. theres a white border around everything which helps seperate the piece from the black background. it also pulls the rest of the colors out a bit more. the outlines are all crisp and sharp, just like a tattoo artists' would be. you can imagine how easy this would be to trace.

type - im not a fan of serif fonts, so i think this type face could have been done just a bit better. although, in 1987 there wernt as many options as there are today. the text does however reflect the line quality pretty well. its straight and clear. again, it would be easy to trace that type to duplicate it. i may not be a big fan of this particular type, but i do think it works well enough here. if i were designing this today and had to choose a typeface, it would be something similar because the banners and lines are symetrical and very cleanly done.

shape - if we remove the color, does the design stay intact? of course it does, and that is a good use of shape. you will notice the beautiful detail and shading on the skulls, which also provides shape. a cross is always a good shape to use. it makes people pay attention. there is a nice balance of sharpe cornerd shapes (banners, cross) and round shapes (skulls) which adds contrast to the piece and make sit much more interesting. this design is a text book example of good shape use.

texture - those banners are a bit rough around the edges arnt they? yes, i think that reflects the band very well. the hair detail? amazing. very well done. even the yellow interwoven lines provide good texture; its like a blanket or basket. the texture adds depth and interest to the whole composition so its not too flat.

balance - this is very symetrical and screams composition balance. which makes it very pleasing to look at, and provides a great logo, or album cover. 

contrast - i explained the contrast in shape, and thats how this artist acheived most of his contrast. there is also contrast in color. purple and yellow being opposite colors. theres also plenty of black and white being used all over

unity - its easy to see the unity here. if we put a grid on this picture, we would see how balanced everything is and how everything lines up. everything here looks like it belongs with one another. its all working together, and if one thing were taken out, it would look a bit empty.

value - there are subtle uses of different values here. on the skulls mostly. you can see the shading on the skulls, hair, and hats. not too much to force it to look realistic, but just enough to be good. also good reflections on the sunglasses

color - we're mostly looking at red, purple, and yellow here which is a very strong combination. (you can see another example of these colors being used very well here http://k53.pbase.com/o4/48/616948/1/53216034.pri03.JPG ). these are warm colors, which has nothing to do with anything except they work with each other. this is an area where artist can spend months trying to decide what the perfect color is to use for one spot. the hair colors are almost right on. its strange to me why yellow wasnt used more on the bottom banner, and is prbaly my biggest complaint of the entire thing. overall the colors are repeated well and used strategicly to be the best they can be.

im a graphic design student and do this stuff everyday. its fun for me, so thanks for the opportunity. i never got to actually disect the AFD cover before :) but this is a very very well designed piece of art. i forget the guys name who did it but the guy obviously knew what he was doing and knew how to incorporate all the elements of art. great art is well designed and great design is artfully created. technicaly, this is one of the very best album covers i can think of.




extra FYI - in the interview with Axl and Slash at CGBG in 1988, Axl points out to a fans design as hes autographing it "see how he did it? this is how i wanted it originaly". so according to Axl, thats not the way they wanted that cross to look. thats always stuck with me :)

yeah I remember that, something about Billy White Jr. (the designer of the cover) not being able to draw slash's hair curly.

yeah my tattoo artist did a pretty good job of doing it  : ok:

Lies and slander! :)

Hi, this is Billy White Jr., the guy who designed the cross, I lurk here occasionally.

The original design had Slash's hair as curly, I worked from photos I got from Robert John and looking at Slash in real life, when designing the skulls the one thing that I had to use to make them look like each member, besides the hats and such, was each guy's hair.

The design was changed to make Slash's hair *straight*, or more like Joe Perry, or that's what I was told, and then Slash made his comment on MTV, which cracked me up then, and still does!

Hi Hoosier,

I'm the guy who designed it, thank you for your kind words. :)

I've never heard the CBGB's interview, all I know is that Axl was thrilled with the design when I finished it, and as far as I know still is. No big deal, tho.

Your dissection is interesting, and fun to read, considering it's my work, but not entirely accurate, here's a few notes:

The original concept was Axl's, he called me and asked me to design it after he saw a drawing my cousin Ed had. I met the band earlier through him, and Del James. He wanted a cross with skulls that looked like the band, the rest he left up to me. He told me what the cross meant, but it was a long time ago, and I don't remember everything he said to me, and I don't want to misrepresent his feelings and thoughts about it.

The placement of the skulls was intentional, for compositional reasons - placing the two dark haired skulls (Slash and Izzy) worked better vertically than horizontally - the one thing I have left of that project is a page from a sketch book with notes from a phone convo with Axl, and two variations of the skull's placement, and looking at it I remember the thought process behind it - the heaviness of the dark hair and their hats made them to "heavy" on the side arms. Axl was always in the middle, and I placed the others as I did to balance the piece to the horizontal.

The cross and the details in it are an informal tribute to Jim Fitzpatrick and Thin Lizzy, Axl and I are both huge Thin Lizzy fans. Axl already had Jim Fitzpatrick's Black Rose cover on his arm, so I felt confident doing it. I love doing that kind of intricate, intertwined line work, and this was a perfect design to use it. I designed that first, then copied it to another piece of paper, and added the crosses - as it was a tatoo from the start, I did the outlines first, got the design solid, then filled it in. I used a mixture of watercolor, india ink, and guache for the final, and it was 200% of the final size. I don't know who has that original, most likely Geffen has it. The cross-only page is long gone, lost in the many moves during college.

The colors, I don't remember why I chose them, but I was in the middle of studying for a degree in illustration at the time, so I was deep into color theory, and I was probably balancing the colors to make the reds and yellows and blacks of the skulls stand out. Wish I could remember, but it was a long time ago! I usually use instinct to pick colors, so who knows? Your comments about the contrast are spot on, tho - I was learning how to control contrast in college at that point, so it's reflected there.

The top scroll was in the original, and Geffen's art department added the lower one and set the type in both - and the type choices were to family them in with the larger "Guns N' Roses" lettering on the cover, which Axl requested and approved, from what i remember. They also redid the reflections in the sunglasses, and redid Slash's hair, but the rest of it is the original design.They also added the white outline, as the original was on white paper, with no background. If you look at Axl's tattoo, the top scroll has "Guns N' Roses in a handdrawn font (this was way before computer design, it was all hand-drawing then!), and no bottom scroll - that's exactly what I gave Axl. The guy who did the tattoo did an amazing job, I saw it right after he had it done, the colors were amazing, and matched what I did, and he did a amazing job with the detail work. (Robert Bennedetto? I think?)

Anyway, that's my recollection! :) Again, thanks for the kinds words. Who knew that the design I did in my dorm room would end up being this big? I was more impressed and honored then that someone was going to wear my artwork on their skin - and still is a HUGE honor. I would'nt change a thing, and I'm lucky to have had a small part in the bigger GNR story. :)

BWJ

Wow, FusedArts that's amazing.  Thanks so much for sharing.

thanks for sharing that  :)

do you by chance have your original before it was edited to straighten slash's hair?

Cool story...thanks for sharing!  You should be very proud to have designed this...certainly one of the most recognizable album covers ever!

Robert Benedetti

Thanks for the info FusedArts :beer:

Awesome story!
 : ok:

I always wondered why only three are wearing shades with the little beams of round light reflecting on the shades.