Guest post by Sam Smith, a Nashville-based designer and musician. In addition to William Tyler’s cover designs for Behold the Spirit, Impossible Truth, Modern Country, and Lost Futures, Sam has designed posters for some of today’s most notable independent film distributors including Janus Films, Grasshopper Film, and A24, as well as numerous covers for The Criterion Collection. See more of his work at samsmyth.net and @samsmyth on Instagram.
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William and I grew up together across the street from one another, on a dead end street with a creek. We have been collaborating on creative projects ever since, from home movies and bands when we were young to posters and album covers in our adult careers. When envisioning the album art for his sublime and evocative new record Time Indefinite, William and I exchanged many visual ideas and influences between each other in order to capture a certain mood and aesthetic. |
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We are both cinephiles, and film posters will often come up in our dialogue. The Japanese poster for Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice was one of the first images that William was particularly drawn to, and served as a keystone for cover design process. The juxtaposition of a placid and nostalgic family scene and a shocking burst of flame, interrupting the image in an unsettling way, exemplified the layered and troubling tone William wanted for the cover art. |
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This theatre poster by Polish poster great Waldemar Świerzy—whose film poster for Antonioni's Blow-Up I have framed next to my desk as I type this—takes this idea further, showing a static human silhouette in the process of being transformed and overtaken by a violent visual force. While this image is more direct and horrifying than what we were envisioning, Świerzy's style reminded me as it often does of how simple and unfussy illustration styles can still convey rich symbolic meaning, representing a shift in a character, ideology, or moment in time. |
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This conceptual approach can be seen across Polish graphic design, as in this album cover by Ewa Pomorska. Much like the classical and experimental music contained within these sleeves, abstract colors and shapes can express what literal, pictoral forms of representation cannot. These broken, kaleidoscopic strips of color were very inspiring to me as an element that could be added to our scene as a way of time stretching a scene or a moment, as a memory sits in our mind, slightly distorted and untethered from solid ground. |
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To see the full process creating the cover image for Time Indefinite as well as its gatefold imagery, watch the video essay below. Time Indefinite released on Psychic Hotline on April 25th, 2025. |