We like to keep up to date with all things design based, and we’ve just stumbled across this little beauty.

A lot of people will be fully aware of a certain new band called Royal Blood, and their new album cover – our head designer especially who can’t get enough of their music. What you may not realise though, is that this design won Best Art Vinyl design for 2014, as voted for by the public.

The illustration on the vinyl, created by Dan Hillier, was voted for by tens of thousands of people onArt Vinyl’s awards. This was the 10th year the awards have been running, with artwork for the likes of Hard-Fi and Muse winning in previous years.

Hillier’s design, based on an artwork he created called Pachamama, which was developed following a visit to Peru in which the artist sat in a ceremony with master shamans in the Amazon, can be perceived in many different lights. In essence, it is the stars and heavens right the way down to the soil of the Earth, encapsulated in the shape of a woman – Mother Earth.

Hillier says

Pachamama is a Quechuan [native South American] word meaning World Mother, or Earth Mother. We are in desperate need of rediscovering our respect for her. Pachamama is profound intelligence and love manifesting as the apparentworld, giving birth to everything, including us.

Royal Blood approached me in the summer to make a new picture for their debut album, and then decided they wanted to use this piece, and it’s been lovely to see how far and wide it has appeared.