It was past 11 in the morning when Xiao Qing-yang (蕭青陽) opened the door of his Taipei studio dressed in a hooded black T-shirt, jeans and a white cap.
“I didn’t expect visitors at such an early hour,” said Xiao, a record packaging designer, said in an interview early last month.
“Designers work at night and sleep in the morning,” he joked, as he led the visitors into his studio.
PHOTO: CNA
Hundreds of CDs lie all over the place — against the wall, on shelves and piled up at the back of the room. Some are tracks Xiao picked up on his own, but most were given to him because he designed their covers.
The 45-year-old Xiao, known as a leading proponent of “Taiwan’s indie music ethos,” has created nearly 1,000 record covers since graduating at 19 from Fu-hsing Trade and Arts School, the nation’s first vocational high school for the arts.
Working outside the mainstream music business, Xiao has focused his efforts over the past 26 years on alternative, independent or indigenous music artists and labels — the “commercial misfits” as he calls them.
“I don’t like the way local pop singers are portrayed on their album covers. Designers in Taiwan are always told to make a perfect-looking big face, without showing any other artistic details,” he said.
Xiao prefers to spend his time with independent labels, because they allow him to use his creativity, he said.
But while developing imaginative covers represents a flow of positive energy, it is not always a lucrative art, he said.
Given that independent bands often have very limited budgets and resources, Xiao generally keeps his design fee relatively low, at about NT$20,000 per sleeve. He had agreed to do a job for as little as NT$4,000, because the client had limited funds.
“I’m not that at ease with commercial communications. I’m always more interested in things being done better throughout the process, rather than thinking about making money out of each design,” he said.
However, eschewing commercial considerations has led to occasional frustrations and self-doubt.
He had quit the design business four times — once opting to help out at his friend’s noodle shop.
Each time, he returned to designing because he realized he could not stay away.
“I spend hours looking through racks of records in dingy record shops, looking for the coolest music and the most beguiling and mysterious-looking covers,” Xiao said.
“I am the kind of fan that jumps and screams at a concert. Being a record designer is the ideal job for me. I can listen to great music while doing the graphic design at the same time,” he said.
In 2005, Xiao shot to fame when his cover design for the album The Wandering Accordion (飄浮手風琴) by Taiwanese artist Wang Yan-meng (王雁盟) was nominated in the Grammy Awards for best recording package, making him the first Asian designer to be nominated at the US music awards.
His friends thought the nomination was purely luck, but Xiao took it seriously.
Three years later he was nominated again in the same category for his cover artwork on the Chun-Mei Taiwanese Opera Troupe’s White Horse (我身騎白馬), and in 2009 he received his third Grammy nomination with Poems and Songs (吳晟詩歌專輯) in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category.
At this year’s Grammy Awards, his intricate 11-page paper-cut for the album Story Island (故事島) by Taiwanese independent musician Lee Cin-yun (李欣芸) will again compete with the works of four international designers in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category.
According to Xiao, a panel of judges assigned to the category selects the top five album sleeves out of tens of thousands of applications in the first round, after which 3,000 judges cast their vote to choose the final winner.
Xiao said the design for Story Island was his most complete work to date.
“I’ve been designing covers all my life, but I don’t think there was any other single album before Story Island that allowed me to fully express my ideas about design,” he said.
For 18 months, Xiao turned down all other jobs to dedicate himself to Story Island and do it the way he felt it should be done.
Drawing inspiration from the ancient the latest laser technology to piece together iconic sites and major natural disasters in Taiwan — especially Typhoon Morakot in 2009 — and create intricate vignettes that depict what he called “the beauty and wrath of Mother Nature.”
The album’s success has shattered expectations. Independent records average sales of about 3,000 copies, but Story Island has sold more than 25,000 copies, a number that “completely defies what the pop market stands for,” Xiao said.
The design also brought him three international awards last year — Best Recording Package at the 10th Chinese Music Media Awards in China, the Best of the Best from the Red Dot design awards in Germany and the Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum in the US.
His newfound fame has brought him a flood of speaking requests. He has been invited to deliver more than 100 speeches on his design for Story Island at home and abroad.
With his life having changed dramatically in recent years, Xiao is ready to embrace change and move into new fields.
He will be designing bags for French fashion brand agnes b that will make their debut this summer, and he will also try his hand at things he doesn’t feel he is particularly good at — being a TV host, writing columns and promoting his work.
“The Grammy nomination has given me a lot of encouragement, because it has solidified my belief that it is important to make a good, artistic album sleeve,” he said.
“It has also taught me that a good designer has to learn to communicate and share. I really want to share Taiwan with the world,” he added.
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