Tuesday 12 October 2010

Research - Derek Riggs

Derek Riggs was one the main designers of the highly sucessfull British Heavy Metal band, Iron Maiden's album artwork.
He and the other diesigners came up with a reoccuring character whom they placed at the forefront of each album cover who they named Eddi
e. Throughout the differnt albums Eddie looked different depending on the style of the music on the album and the album title.
Derek said that the inspiration for Eddie was because he was sick of the typical 1970's horror charcters and wanted to create a monster that actually looked scary.
The image above was the first album by the band and as the others progressed a reoccuring theme prevailed.
Below is an image of the 'Best of' Iron Maiden with a collage of quite a few of the different Eddies from the artwork of the previous albums.

Throughout his work he made very apparent the bands nationality and partiotism as they were the first proper British Heavy Metal band though having landmarks and subtle hints, for example in the image for the album 'The Trooper', Eddie is seen to be carrying a union jack flag whilst climbing over defeated enemies which could represent Britain conquering enemies.



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