New album release for Mais Um – Lucas Santtana – 3 Sessions in Greenhouse – now available via Bandcamp

Design & Illustration by Think Beautiful.

Given the Dub influences on this album, we first looked at a lot of vintage Dub album covers for inspiration. Paying homage to this musical genre, it seemed fitting to use a palette of red, gold and green, the colours of Rastafari and the Ethiopian flag. Green and yellow feature on the Brazilian flag, so we wanted to make a link there too.

Looking at old Reggae LPs gave us the idea to create an illustration using an animal as an emblem for the record and the use graphic borders. Instead of the Lion of Juddah, the symbol of Rastafari, we wanted to feature an animal native to Rio where the album was recorded. Lucas suggested a monkey, which led to the drawing on the cover of a Spider monkey, native to the area. As the album sessions were recorded late into the evening, this set the scene for the whole cover design – a downtown Rio cityscape merging into the forest. Also relating to local influences, stylistically the illustration and typography references the Brazilian popular art of Cordel woodcuts and indigenous patterns.

The back cover is a remix of the front based on another suggestion from Lucas. The “Greenhouse” in the album’s title refers to the large amounts of green herbs being smoked during the recording sessions. Lucas’s idea was to represent this with a cloud of smoke coming through the greenery and a reefer subtly hidden the foliage.