Having produced a slew of kaleidoscopic album artworks for heavyweights like Tame Impala, Foals, The Horrors and Bonobo, Leif Podhajský is a master at creating mind-expanding visualisations of mind-expanding music.
We caught up with the graphic designer to chat sound, colour and the importance of intrigue.
Chatting to album art luminary Leif Podhajský about sound and colour, the psychedelic experience, and how to draw people in with abstract ideas.
HAPPY: You’ve said before that working with Tame Impala on the Innerspeaker cover pushed you into new territory. How did this relationship come about and how did it push you?
LEIF: At the time I was living in Melbourne co-running my own graphic design agency. To me there felt like there was this monumental push in the creative scene at that time and in myself especially. Running my own business allowed me a freedom to explore my more artistic ideas on the side and I started developing these with fervour.
I’d been a fan of Tame Impala and seen them play a few times, I even snuck into a small sold out show they had by pretending to know the band. Their first EP had been out for a while, gaining a bit of a cult following from lovers of Dungen, Todd Rundgren and 70s sun-soaked psychedelia. But to me it always felt like it had this modern touch, which I was also trying to bring into my own work.
Some of this new work I’d been doing was published in a Berlin based magazine called Lodown and Tame’s label manager spotted it and dropped me an email asking if I’d like to put together some artwork for their first LP. I mean, right place at the right time.
Read the full interview in Happy Mag Issue #5.
