Album Cover inspiration: 'The Great Bear'

Our idea to use the tube map as the back cover of our album was influenced not only by the continuous London theme of our coursework but by an artist called Simon Patterson. His artwork, called The Great Bear, used the tube map in the same way that we plan to but instead of putting track names in place of the stations, but used each train line to represent a different group of people; such as footballers, scientists and comedians. This piece of art provoked many different responses, such as one writer claiming that Patterson "discovered the dreams of modernism within the world of the 1990s in the same way that he found the dreams of the present lurking within the modernist space of Harry Beck's underground map." The Great Bear is on display at the Tate gallery. Patterson's artwork inspired us to feel confident in our decision to use the London Underground map as part of our design. It clearly conveys the conventions of our theme and helps us to make our album artwork as creative as possible.