Secret 7" // Visual research

Tame Impala - Currents, the album 'The Less I Know The Better' is featured on

Why have I chosen Tame Impala to design for?

• They are one of my favourite bands, so I couldn't resist. I find their music inspiring and so energetic and unique.
• Their album covers and music videos are always really creative and colourful; their styles coincide with my own graphic design interests.

Other Tame Impala album covers:

Their music is described as 'psychedelic rock' and their album artwork reflects that with certain elements. The imagery used is often highly saturated in colour, with strange illusion effects. Their albums definitely have a 'retro' feel to them.

I have always noticed how vivid their music videos are, so I have screenshotted some scenes that I find interesting.

Stills from the music video for 'The Less I Know the Better'

With a mixture of animated illustration and surreal high school scenes, an important element of this video is colour to correlate all the imagery. The use of blue, yellow and red stands out the most, and is used in all of the clothing and animation.

The use of a gorilla and lots of symbolic messages throughout (hair, bananas, sex, sports) makes it very conceptually pleasing.

Stills from the music video for 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards'

The animation for this video is impressive, as it is very fast and often syncs with the beat of the song. It seems to be made out of plasticine or a similar material, zooming in and out of symbols and rapidly changing from one colour to the next.

It is hard to work out what the concept is, or if there is one at all. The imagery is constantly changing between different themes that don't seem to be related.

That being said, the outcome really suits their upbeat music and the psychedelic style.

Wes Wilson's 'psychedelic' design

Wes Wilson is an artist who is known for designing psychedelic posters, which I came across while searching for psychedelic art. 

The vivid colours and trippy imagery and type certainly remind me of Tame Impala's often recurring style.

From this research I have gotten some ideas based on colour and abstract imagery. I want to capture the essence of the song and of Tame Impala, and I might take inspiration from the video to create something true to them.

Past successful submissions

These two designs particularly caught my eye, as they are quite abstract and vivid in colour. Neither of them have any obvious connotations that clearly show which song, this gives an extra air of secrecy. However, I think it is particularly powerful to use a feature that relates strongly to the song or artist.

These designs are not digital, they are physical pieces that have been made by hand, quite creatively. This has fuelled my desire to create something physical this year: I have not made it into the final designs the last two years, and I think making something quite unique will give me more of a chance third time round.