9 and the Numbers
Treasure Island
CD
Treasure Island
CD
A series of graphic design for the recent album Treasure Island of 9 and the Numbers. It consists of two cover images for their digital single album, cover and inside artwork for the LP, CD, promotion post card, along with the poster and the set design for the concert.
- Design: Jaemin Lee
- Client: ORM Entertainment, Tunetable Movement and Goodtime Media
- Year: November 2014
9 and the Numbers is one of the most successful Indie pop band who made their debut in 2009 and won the Best Modern Rock Album of the Year at Korean Music Awards in 2011. I designed most of their album artworks including their debut, and EP in 2012. Treasure Island was released in November 2014 as their 2nd album, to which the band fully concentrated their capacity in its making.
A few months prior to its release, I had met the band several times to discuss about the cover artwork as a way to visually communicate the lyrics of their songs. After we came to a final decision about the main graphic, we decided to reveal this to the public a bit by bit in gradual order. The first design was revealed in September along with a single song, the next part of the design was revealed in October with another song, and then the entire album in November, showing the full artwork. A concert was held in December to celebrate the album release.
The main concept was COORDINATES and LEGEND that leads to a treasure island. This island refers to the treasures that exist in the minds of every humans, but is difficult to reach. The island also refers to a utopia of musical achievement, where this band wants to sail toward.
9, the leader of the band and I conceptualized together the shapes of triangles for the album cover. Each triangle symbolizes GLAMOROUS FRUITS and WEAK ROOTS and SIMPLE FRUITS and STRONG ROOTS. The artwork on the album cover is rather abstract compared to the poster design which embodies a helm and an anchor in a detailed way as a key visual image.
The sub-title of this album is Breaking Wall, Finding Gold and was used as the main title of the concert.
I made this phrase together with the members of the band, from the idea that the two english words gold and wall have same spelling when written in Korean.
In prints, I decided to use florescent spot colors in order to bring strong contrast with the classy gold color. In the lyrics written inside of the booklet, I applied these florescent colors in different phrases. Green represents GOLD, as a symbol of a precious thing that has to be found and protected, while the pink represents a WALL which needs to be broken down. The consistent use of yellow color throughout the entire work arouses not only strong but also wailful atmosphere and it is being well received by the audience.
This album Treasure island itself have been achieving excellent results, and ranked 3rd on K-indie chart (March 2015) even after four months since its release. The concert ticket was sold out and the song won the Best Modern Rock Song of the Year at Korean Music Awards in 2014.
