Folks! Folks! Folks! is a handcrafted boxed set exploring the lineage, politics, and emotional core of American folk music.
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About the boxed set:
The outer box is laser cut and engraved Red Oak, conditioned and stained with Red Oak wood stain. Inside, foam insets are draped in velvet to house three album boxes and a hand-bound hardcover book. Each album box is constructed from layered cardstock and contains a lyric booklet and a 7-inch vinyl record, finished with a rust-effect coating and custom photo and tracklist labels. The set also includes a Fender harmonica.
The hardcover book is 140 pages, printed on 80 lb (118 GSM) Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper, and hand-bound and assembled.
Seven American folk artists are featured in chronological order, tracing the evolution of folk music from its early roots to the present. The artists are Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tracy Chapman, and Jesse Welles. Together, they represent a continuous tradition of storytelling, protest, and human connection that defines American folk music.
The three albums are structured around the core pillars of the genre. Each album contains seven songs, one from each artist, selected to best represent the theme.
The Times They Are a-Changin’ focuses on protest and political urgency. Every song is direct, confrontational, and unfiltered, reflecting folk music’s role as a tool for social resistance.
To My Old Brown Earth centers on the human relationship with nature. These songs speak to land, labor, beauty, and reverence for the natural world.
Diamonds and Rust explores heartbreak, longing, and emotional vulnerability. These songs function as both confession and catharsis, offering solace through shared pain.
The art direction draws from the visual language historically associated with folk albums, particularly portraiture paired with restrained typographic systems. Contemporary references informed the structure, but each cover was reinterpreted through my own visual lens.
The Times They Are a-Changin’ features a close-up photograph of Pete Seeger shouting through a megaphone during a 1960s protest outside the U.S. Capitol. A crowd image from the Newport Folk Festival frames the composition and appears again on the vinyl label.
To My Old Brown Earth uses a portrait of Woody Guthrie seated in grass with his guitar, bordered by an Ansel Adams photograph of the American Rockies. This image is also repeated on the vinyl label.
Diamonds and Rust features Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose relationship inspired Baez’s song of the same name. The border image comes from a Dust Bowl photo essay, depicting a rusted vehicle and a collapsing farmhouse, reinforcing the album’s themes of decay, loss, and memory.
All album cover titles are set in Hamilton Wood Type’s Unit Gothic, using the rust tone carried throughout the boxed set. Various weights of HWT Unit Gothic and HWT Columbian are used throughout the book for pull quotes, reinforcing the project’s connection to American printing and protest ephemera. Rust-colored drop caps were photographed from contemporary wood type blocks on the MassArt letterpress, then digitally edited and integrated into the layouts. Body copy is set in Freight by Joshua Darden, with folios set in Freight Small Caps.
Rusty, resonant Americana served as the guiding visual thesis for the project. The design mirrors the emotional weight, political force, and human intimacy of the music itself. This boxed set is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It is an object meant to honor folk music as lived history, personal testimony, and shared cultural memory.
The outer box is laser cut and engraved Red Oak, conditioned and stained with Red Oak wood stain. Inside, foam insets are draped in velvet to house three album boxes and a hand-bound hardcover book. Each album box is constructed from layered cardstock and contains a lyric booklet and a 7-inch vinyl record, finished with a rust-effect coating and custom photo and tracklist labels. The set also includes a Fender harmonica.
The hardcover book is 140 pages, printed on 80 lb (118 GSM) Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper, and hand-bound and assembled.
Seven American folk artists are featured in chronological order, tracing the evolution of folk music from its early roots to the present. The artists are Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tracy Chapman, and Jesse Welles. Together, they represent a continuous tradition of storytelling, protest, and human connection that defines American folk music.
The three albums are structured around the core pillars of the genre. Each album contains seven songs, one from each artist, selected to best represent the theme.
The Times They Are a-Changin’ focuses on protest and political urgency. Every song is direct, confrontational, and unfiltered, reflecting folk music’s role as a tool for social resistance.
To My Old Brown Earth centers on the human relationship with nature. These songs speak to land, labor, beauty, and reverence for the natural world.
Diamonds and Rust explores heartbreak, longing, and emotional vulnerability. These songs function as both confession and catharsis, offering solace through shared pain.
The art direction draws from the visual language historically associated with folk albums, particularly portraiture paired with restrained typographic systems. Contemporary references informed the structure, but each cover was reinterpreted through my own visual lens.
The Times They Are a-Changin’ features a close-up photograph of Pete Seeger shouting through a megaphone during a 1960s protest outside the U.S. Capitol. A crowd image from the Newport Folk Festival frames the composition and appears again on the vinyl label.
To My Old Brown Earth uses a portrait of Woody Guthrie seated in grass with his guitar, bordered by an Ansel Adams photograph of the American Rockies. This image is also repeated on the vinyl label.
Diamonds and Rust features Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose relationship inspired Baez’s song of the same name. The border image comes from a Dust Bowl photo essay, depicting a rusted vehicle and a collapsing farmhouse, reinforcing the album’s themes of decay, loss, and memory.
All album cover titles are set in Hamilton Wood Type’s Unit Gothic, using the rust tone carried throughout the boxed set. Various weights of HWT Unit Gothic and HWT Columbian are used throughout the book for pull quotes, reinforcing the project’s connection to American printing and protest ephemera. Rust-colored drop caps were photographed from contemporary wood type blocks on the MassArt letterpress, then digitally edited and integrated into the layouts. Body copy is set in Freight by Joshua Darden, with folios set in Freight Small Caps.
Rusty, resonant Americana served as the guiding visual thesis for the project. The design mirrors the emotional weight, political force, and human intimacy of the music itself. This boxed set is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It is an object meant to honor folk music as lived history, personal testimony, and shared cultural memory.