Nine Inch Nails' #WithTeeth, the first album I art directed end-to-end and the beginning of my work in glitch art, was released 15 years ago today. Happy birthday, old friend.
Here are some of the web teaser videos I created ahead of the album's 2005 release:
Here are some of the web teaser videos I created ahead of the album's 2005 release:
If you haven't picked it up yet, the @nineinchnails "Definitive Edition" vinyl re-issue of #WithTeeth is available direct from NIN, and is the most complete representation of my artwork for the album: store.nin.com/collections/mu… - an absolute steal at $35! 
Some notes on the NIN #WithTeeth art:
During the recording process, the album was known as "Bleedthrough" before it became "With Teeth." I created early concept art for Bleedthrough using a broken printer, and it formed a mysterious early teaser website that I still love.
During the recording process, the album was known as "Bleedthrough" before it became "With Teeth." I created early concept art for Bleedthrough using a broken printer, and it formed a mysterious early teaser website that I still love.
As the album changed identity to "With Teeth," the artwork also needed to change. My glitching techniques moved from broken printers to broken scanners, and I began to find an aesthetic in low-resolution image compression, digital video glitches, and other artifacts of the era.
The blocky digital glitching in the With Teeth NIN logo and utilized throughout the artwork of the era was a manual process I developed with custom masks. I have an extensive tutorial of the process on my Patreon: patreon.com/posts/32660377
Low-res medical and scientific imagery became inspirations and were sometimes incorporated into the artwork. The pixelated font used in the album is one I custom-made based on text used in scientific graph data found online. Gel electrophoresis imagery was used for textures.
The digital lines that were woven throughout the With Teeth artwork were inspired by low-res scientific graphing imagery, but I created them by hand in Photoshop, downsized them to the point where the lines would be reduced to pixels, and then cleaned up the pixel lines by hand.
I combined the inspiration of scientific data and Joy Division's iconic "Unknown Pleasures" album cover for the pixel lines on "The Hand That Feeds" single artwork.
I carried With Teeth's digital glitch aesthetic across every piece of media we released for the band at the time, including the band promo photos.
Consumer digital video was new at the time, and just as I had exploited video compression artifacts and other low-resolution glitches and accidents, I found a way to exploit digital video interlacing in the video for "The Hand That Feeds." vimeo.com/68956261
The DP on "The Hand That Feeds" thought I was insane for insisting on shooting the whole thing in 30i, especially as 24p was the brand new darling in the digital video world. I had to insist on it again and again, as the strange final look of the video depended on it.
NIN Lighting designer Roy Bennett used my With Teeth artwork as inspiration to create the production design of the tour, and built the digital glitch "teeth" LED screens for the stage, bringing the aesthetic to life. You can see that show on the "Beside You In Time" concert film.
We released a digital art companion to the album, a MASSIVE 7ft lyric poster PDF filled with detail that anyone was free to print out themselves. It was a daunting piece of work, and I'm thrilled to see it finally represented in the vinyl re-issue package.
