Hi I’m Torren,
I enjoy and have experience working with illustration, typography, identity work, editorial design and motion graphics and have a keen interest in photography, film and music. I work across both printed and digital formats and am particularly interested in the relationship between the two – something ever more relevant with today's technologies.
Sonic Youth Re-Imagined Covers
Created as a self-initiated project, after researching theories on how technology has slowed down progression in visual cultures, particularly within music; with an ever-increasing number of re-issues and re-releases; I wanted to examine how technology could instead be used as a driving force, deciding to translate the album artwork of Sonic Youth, a band I was drawn to due to their experimental and innovative nature, into a contemporary aesthetic through the use of recent technologies, exploring its effectiveness – producing both animated visuals for digital use and still imagery for the printed versions.
The first design, for the album ‘EVOL’, portrays the album’s recurring theme of the glamorisation of death, as well as referencing a statement from the band claiming the album hoped to ‘Expose the dark underbelly of American pop culture’.
With the second design, for the album ‘Sister’, I wanted to visualise the idea of ‘looking through a different lens’ – taking new angles and approaches towards existing methods and standards, reflecting the nature of Sonic Youth’s music.
The design for the album ‘Washing Machine’ was created to reference the idea of the ‘structure within the chaos’ – producing a disorderly ‘glitch-like’ aesthetic, challenging legibility and embracing elements of error.