Beautiful record sleeve design from Belgian designer Jelle Martens

Ghent-based graphic designer Jelle Martens makes work which might be described as design with a heavy dollop of fine art added in. Working predominantly on record sleeve design since graduating two years ago, he has created projects for record labels Other People, Software and Unday Records among others, employing his unique mixture of colour, texture and manipulated imagery to create designs which are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Halfway between optical illusion and close-ups in a photographic archive, the blend is an aesthetically pleasing departure from the new norms in the field; they almost feel like they should be in an art gallery rather than on the dusty shelves of a record shop. Jelle is also making a very strong case for graphic designers photographing their work on film; the graininess of the shots in his portfolio serve these tactile compositions better than digital possibly could.