David Bowie's 'Blackstar' Designer Says Cover Art is a "Comment on Mortality"
Writing about David Bowie's final record, Jan. 8's Blackstar, you're supposed to just throw down the ★ sign. The cover art for the singer's first-ever No. 1 album, above, tells the same story—no name, no title, just a big, basic black star on a white background, with fragments of the star arranged below. Jonathan Barnbrook, the 49-year-old graphic artist who did five designs with Bowie over the last 15 years, spoke to Dezeen about their latest collaboration and how the cover, like the album, lyrics and videos for "Lazarus" and "Blackstar," all dealt directly with the prospect of death.
"This was a man who was facing his own mortality. The Blackstar symbol [★], rather than writing Blackstar, has as a sort of finality, a darkness, a simplicity, which is a representation of the music," said Barnbrook, who previously created the artwork for the 2013 comeback album The Next Day, which was simply the cover of Bowie's 1977 hit "Heroes" with a white box and plain black text. Before, he did 2002's Heathen, '03's Reality and the 2014 compilation Nothing Has Changed.
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