The Grammys 2018 best album design award ends in a tie

The winners of the 60th Grammy awards were announced yesterday evening in New York. The best recording package award is surprisingly a tie this year, with the Grammy award going to both Father John Misty’s Pure Comedy deluxe edition LP and El Orisha de la Rosa by Magín Díaz.

Father John Misty’s record sleeve was illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Ed Steed, with art direction by Sasha Barr and Joshua Tillman (the man behind the pseudonym Father John Misty). Its deluxe edition features a die-cut illustrated jacket in silver and black ink and four interchangeable backgrounds sleeves in full colour. The release came with additional holographic tarot cards housed in a plastic slipcase printed with white ink.

Magín Díaz’s record, El Orisha de la Rosa was the first solo record by Colombian musician at the age of 95, who unfortunately passed away in November last year. Its package, editorial design and illustrations were created by art director Claudio Roncoli and Colombian studio Cactus, who built upon the “transdiciplinary project” creating a “great collage” says the studio. Several visual artists from the region were commissioned to “visually represent each of the 18 songs that make up the album,” the full list can be found here.

The best boxed or special limited edition package was awarded to The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition. The record was made in 1977 when NASA launched the Voyager I and II spacecrafts into space, and was mounted with a phonograph record described as “an interstellar message to introduce our civilisation to extraterrestrials who might encounter the probes, perhaps billions of years from now”. In turn the record features “the story of Earth expressed in sounds, images and science” including the work of Bach, Beethoven, Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry. The compilation was art directed by David Pescovitz, the editor and managing partner of Boing Boing, a research director at the Institute for the Future, and the co-founder of Ozma Records who released the record; Timothy Daly another co-founder of Ozma and manager of iconic record store, Amoeba Music in San Francisco; and Lawrence Azerrad known as LAD Design, who has previously created visual identities for The Clinton Foundation and seven record packages for the band Wilco.

Kendrick Lamar also deservedly cleared up at the awards ceremony in both the creative and music categories, winning best music video for Humble directed by Dave Meyers and The Little Homies. The single also won best rap performance and best rap song; his album Damn. additionally won best rap album.

Read more about the nominees in these categories here, and the full list of winners here.