-: My name is Joe Spix,
and I'm a Creative Director at Universal Music Group.
Our art department is a department that services
Republic Records, Island Records, and Def Jam Records,
which are on the East Coast labels,
the East Coast labels for Universal Music Group.
What we do is we basically manage all of the creative needs
that come through for those labels.
From imaging our artists through photo shoots,
through either creating or sourcing or hiring out for
album artwork for both physical packaging
as well as digital assets and all of the
good stuff that has to communicate the project,
the album art and all that kinda good thing
to the fans and the people who are
going to be interested in the music.
Our department is currently structured in a way
where I will be assigned to an artist,
there's a new artist that gets signed.
We have the opportunity to meet with them
and kind of get an idea of what kind of music is it,
what does the music sound like, is the music done yet
or are they still working on it, do they have a story
they wanna tell, who are they as a person,
kind of get a little bit of that intake from them,
and also talk to the in-house teams, marketing and so forth,
to find out what their goals are, maybe what is the
demographic that they expect for this,
and kind of get all that input.
I'm usually assigned to that project through its duration.
We listen to the music, right, and then there's
questions that might come up, what's this about,
or what's the album title about, do you have anything,
when you imagine what your album artwork looks like,
what do you see, as an artist, as a musician,
while you're in the studio, are you thinking of
any visuals, were you watching a lot of movies,
what movie scene can't you get out of your head
when you were thinking about this song?
Any of that kinda stuff is good to populate my head
with the same kinds of things that are in their head.
That'll help me present things that I think make sense
because it's not about my vision for their artwork,
it's about me helping them get their vision out.