Selected Work

Public Enemy — Power to the People and the Beats

Package design for Def Jam's definitive Public Enemy hits collection — graphic and typographic, built on negative space rather than clutter.

Artist
Public Enemy
Client
Def Jam/Universal
Year
2005
Category
Package design

About this project

In 2005 Def Jam/Universal released what's become the definitive Def Jam era Public Enemy hits collection. I was brought on to bring my own vision to the package design.

With this design, I wanted to make the important collection stand out from the other Public Enemy hits collections that were released up until that point. I went with a strongly graphical/typographical based design built on negative space, rather than something busy and cluttered.

  • The front cover and tray card side by side: the Public Enemy logo and crosshair above a stencilled group portrait, and an eighteen-track listing set in small caps.
    Front cover and tray card.
  • The front cover alone — Public Enemy logo, crosshair, and the stencilled group portrait on a pale ground.
    The cover, carried by type and negative space.
  • The digipack production layout: all six panels flat, with crop marks, fold marks, panel dimensions in millimetres and inches, and a printer's colour bar along the bottom.
    The digipack production file — six panels flat, with the print marks and colour bar.