Peter Gabriel I/O — Marc Bessant

Just over a year ago (Nov2022) design work began in earnest on Peter Gabriel’s album I/O. Initial meetings with Peter went well and we soon established a mark which would become the I/O logo which would then be used on recordings and touring for the year ahead. Simple geometric shapes, influenced by Bauhaus design, representing male and female forms, divided yet connected. I was keen to use bright neon colours which both clashed and complemented, a design ‘argument’ which reflected many of the themes in the songs - division and cohesion, isolation and connectivity, in and out.

Peter wanted to work with different artists on each song so we researched many, making suggestions for and against until we had a dozen or so which were then approached to contribute. Fortunately all that were approached were happy to be involved, so once a month a digital single was released each featuring a piece of work from that particular artist - culminating in what would become the book in the LP/CD packaging.

Artificial Intelligence, and the rate at which the world was changing because of it, was also a conversation point during our meetings - so I attempted to illustrate this by using a high resolution photograph, a distorted image, and a heavily pixelated (to the point of being made of painstakingly-placed tiny squares) version of Peter’s eye. All three examples would be used throughout the I/O campaign.

We had worked with Nadav Kander previously (Scratch My Back), he is a wonderful photographer and he and Peter get on very well, something very obvious from the quality of the shoot - the cover image is a detail from a set of shots - some more obscure(d) than others, a portrait of moving parts, duality, strength and vulnerability, hiding in - looking out.

The back cover shows a high-resolution image of the surface of Io, the innermost and third-largest of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter c/o our good friends at NASA.

Gatefold Sleeve CMYK+1 (left and right eye), 2xLPs, 32 page CMYK+1 booklet; CD/BR tri-fold and barn-door digipaks, 32 page CMYK+1 booklet and neon labels. Each format was attributed its own neon Pantone obi strip.