In an interview with Complex Magazine released today, Ben Swantek (@BenSwantek) talks about designing the artwork for each of The Weeknd’s mixtapes in “The Trilogy”. Below are some excerpts from the interview as Ben speaks on his design for “House Of Balloons”, “Thursday” and “Echoes Of Silence”.

“House of Balloons was a super exciting album for me. I was living in Vancouver at the time and had no idea about all the hype it was generating (pre-release) in Toronto. It was the first time I got to work with Lamar Taylor and Drop, two guys who I continue to work with through the trilogy. House of Balloons and the following two mixtapes were also designed to reflect shipping labels over prints and colour swatch aesthetics.”

 
“Faced with the decision to either switch up the mixtape art work or keep it the same, we decided to keep the trilogy consistent and follow the same aesthetic through. The primary colours were chosen because Martha Stewart’s selections weren’t cool. Thursday is pretty self-explanatory; you just need to listen to the mixtape to figure that out.”

“This was a fun mixtape to work on. Thursday was shot in my loft out east, but since I had moved, we didn’t have studio space anymore. We shot in a glorious studio and had a lot more space to experiment with framing. This being the final piece to the trilogy, I needed to make sure that it had a deep and concluding feel. Thus, red was chosen.”

Click here to read the full article on Complex.