THE TiPS are currently gearing up to release their new album TWISTS’N’TURNS. We caught up with the band to get an insight on the artwork for it – check it out below!
Who designed the cover and what made you decide to choose them?
It´s designed by Stefan Beham a.k.a. “SBÄM”. He lives in Austria and already did some great stuff for Fat Wreck bands and other artistst, like Lagwagon, Zebrahead and many more. We kind of stumbled over his work in the internet and it struck our nerve. So we decided to get in touch and ask if he was up for it, which he obviously was.
What’s the story behind the artwork?
It is a mixture of some imagery we were using for the last years. For example the skull is something you can find in the artwork of our proceeding album (TRIPPIN’) which was designed by Opie Ortiz, a tattoo artist from Long Beach, who also designed a lot Sublime artowrks and who used to be in Long Beach Dub Allstars as well. Also, we do have some wodden, smoking skulls on stage – the candy skull can be found in merch designs as well as on our cabinets. We then added the phoenix into our world of imagery.
What inspired the original artwork idea?
It´s more or less about the record itself and the music that can be found on it. The phoenix for example can be seen as a symbol for breaking out of the old frame, renewing ourselfes and devlopgin further – it’s like the candy skull is the egg the phoenix is born from – it symbolizes something new without neglecting the roots we come from, which is why the candy skull is still a vers strong element in the imagery. Same with the flowers – they were also already part of the TRIPPIN’ artwork. So TWISTS’N’TURNS is like the sequel to TRIPPIN’ in a way.
Did anything change about the artwork from the initial design idea?
Originally, we had some slightly differen ideas, like for exampling including the candy skulls but in a different ways than we normally use them. But in the end, we decided we want to stick the more “comic-esque” style of the last two records, which is why Stefan was the perfect match in the end!
What inspired you to get the design printed on a skateboard?
All of us are into skateboarding and are still skating. We hang around a lot with our good friend Donald from Pavel Skates, so one night we came up with this idea who great it would be to have an individually branded skateboard (that comes along with a hangtag including a download code of the record) and how awesome that would be. So we teamed up with Pavel Skates and Reell Jeans to realize this little dream – and dude how many independet bands do have their own branded skateboards, that’s so rad!!!
