Dracula (1979)
Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams
Client: Varèse Sarabande, 2018
This was my first design project for Varèse Sarabande. Over the past few years, I've worked with album producer Mike Matessino and La-La Land Records designing several remastered or expanded soundtrack albums from composer John Williams. His music for 1979's Dracula (directed by John Badham and starring Frank Langella and Sir Laurence Olivier) hadn't been released on CD in almost thirty years, so this two-disc deluxe edition--which included music that had never before been released on any format--was eagerly anticipated by film score fans and collectors.
above: original soundtrack CD from Varèse Sarabande (1990)
The Dracula poster title treatment, shown above on the original soundtrack CD cover, was not found in the studio archives. However, the 1979 theatrical trailer ended with the logo featured quite large on screen. Using a screen capture from an HD transfer of the trailer as reference, I began to redraw the logo in Adobe Illustrator (see below).
After redrawing the logo in vector (above), I added some bloody texture and drips to the letters, mainly to give this CD some visual separation from the previous disc, since the cover design would be using the same poster artwork (below).
The scan of the poster artwork provided by Universal (below) had two minor issues: 1) the artwork had a yellow cast which, whether an intentional choice or merely from age, left the art feeling uncomfortably dated, and 2) the artwork was formatted only for vertical use.
Since the poster artwork for Dracula would be used in two different places within the set, I needed to make the artwork flexible to different layout executions. This meant removing the woman in the foreground (temporarily), and adjusting/replacing the clouds to expand the artwork on all sides of Frank Langella's floating visage. I also opened up a blank area above his head for the title to sit cleanly to improve readability.
Since the poster artwork for 1979's Dracula would be used in two different parts of the packaging -- both more or less square -- I needed to make the artwork flexible to different layout executions. This meant removing the woman in the foreground (temporarily), and adjusting/replacing the clouds to expand the artwork on all sides of Frank Langella's floating visage. I also opened up a blank area above his head for the title to sit cleanly to improve readability.
Some additional photos from the film came courtesy of producer Constantin Nasr. In order to use these black and white photos more dramatically in the layout, each was digitally stained with dripping blood (see examples below).
above: These initials, splatters, and lines were painted by hand then scanned for use in the booklet design (below).
To help promote the release of Dracula through social media channels, I developed the environmental product photo shown below. Since the album was still being manufactured, I began by lighting and photographing an unrelated CD set, then compositing the final art and designs in Photoshop, relying on stock photography for the background elements.
John Williams's score to Dracula was released on October 22, 2018 and may still be available for purchase from Varèse Sarabande’s site.
