Madonna - Ray of Light (Expanded Box Set)
MUSIC PACKAGING CONCEPT ART & DESIGN : NOVEMBER 2021 - JANUARY 2022
MUSIC PACKAGING CONCEPT ART & DESIGN : NOVEMBER 2021 - JANUARY 2022
"... despite its sunny title the album is a voyage into the darkness and terror of grief. Like Dark Side of the Moon, it is an elegiac study of ego, mental disintegration and the fear of death. Pink Floyd’s epic drew on ‘70s psychoanalysis, R. D. Laing and the divided self, while Ray of Light captures the 90s zeitgeist with its references to Kabbalah and the subconscious. Dark Side uses the sun and moon as symbols of life and death, while Ray of Light revolves around the duality of sea and sky. Both albums require the listener to go the whole journey to get the full effect." - Lucy O'Brien for TheQuietus.com
"Madonna played a large role in reopening mainstream American music to the club sounds of Europe in ways that have reverberated since. You can hear Ray of Light in artists as disparate as Britney, who worked with Orbit years after Madonna on “Alien,” to the adventurous producer and vocalist Grimes, who called Ray of Light a “masterpiece.” [It is important] to reveal something serious about yourself and the world through your work if you are a pop artist, and much of this can be traced back to Ray of Light." - Pitchfork.com
"Rooted in the underground yet heard and loved by millions, it’s the multi-platinum antecedent to today’s popular EDM, but considerably more personal. Twenty years later, singers and producers alike are still chasing its finely finessed fusion of anguished rumination and beat-driven bliss." - Rolling Stone
Ray of Light is Madonna's seventh studio album, an electronic/techno blend of cutting-edge sounds incorporating ambient, trip hop, psychedelic and Middle Eastern music styles. Produced by Madonna, William Orbit, Patrick Leonard and Marius de Vries, the songs about motherhood, spirituality, grief and death struck a chord with listeners and is frequently regarded as perhaps the best album of her career and one of the greatest mainstream pop albums of all time. It was released in 1998, reached number one in several countries, won four Grammy Awards and sold over 16 million copies worldwide.
This is my favourite album of all time. The music has been the soundtrack of my life, and its incredible photography, elegant graphic design and beautiful holographic special edition from 1998 have all been a direct inspiration on my creative work. I've always wanted to create an expanded box set concept for this album and this project has given me the chance to experiment with photograph retouching and abstract paint animation. I had ideas and concepts in the back of my mind for a few months before sitting down and completing everything in a design sprint from 27 December 2021 to 5 January 2022.
This box set design is directly inspired by the work of Kevin Reagan, the original album artwork designer, who won the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package in 1998 for his work on Ray of Light.
Update (August 2023): I rebuilt this box set in 3D and expanded on some of the initial concepts, including more holographic box artwork, new vinyl variants, and animated examples of how the artwork came together.
The box set
Additional content
Behind the scenes
Browse more of my Madonna box set projects:
Listen to my appearance on the podcast "Inside the Groove":