remastering your work
what's lost, what's found
Explore the intersection of sights and sounds with GLASSES, a deep dive into the expansive world of music graphic design.
They say if you look back at your old work and hate it, it might be a sign that you’re getting better.
I found some of my 2017-18 work from college, as my 2016 intro-to-graphic-design course work’s since been lost, and boy oh boy. Some of it’s genuinely brutal, with others simply being a sign of the times, seeing me treading over tired design tropes trying to find my voice.
This one from 21st of September, 2017, is doing that whole minimalist-y digital illustration style that you’d see all over tumblr and what not. Not too bad considering, but nothing groundbreaking or all that interesting.
Jesus Christ this one bro lol. From Christmas Eve, 2018, the writings on the wall man. Shitty overlay paper texture, really poorly treated images, and an idea that ultimately goes nowhere. Just like edgy whatever stuff. But ya know, I was 17— I was learning, pushing whatever boundaries I thought were there, and making what I thought was cool at the time.
Ten years in, I’m still learning as I go. I’ve been expanding on my style, incorporating different techniques, and overall trying to be a more interesting maker.
I’ve gone back and remastered some of my older work, some from just a year or two ago, to varying results.
A year by year remaster of this 2023 Oasis portrait tee shows an unexpected progression. Piece starts out with a good idea, but pretty horrific treatment. In 2024 I thought, hey, I’ve come a long way, lemme redo this one with my new techniques. Same thing in 2025. Three very different results, three levels of quality. To my surprise, V2 was the best one. V3 isn’t bad, it’s got much better contrast and line work, but ends up being a bit too clean for the concept.
This next one went a whole lot better.
A leaps and bounds improvement, this is still one of my favourite pieces to date. A J. Cole image swap, 100x better overall image treatment, and a more accurate skin tone colour palette takes this one over the edge.
In the music world too, we’ve seen good and bad remasters, the Taylor’s Version rereleases coming to mind. I don’t recall any of the rerecords adding to or improving upon the originals in any significant way. Also, after she got her masters back, I remember seeing Swifties rejoicing that they could finally listen to the originals again, now that the royalties were rightfully going to Taylor. Mixes were hollowed out, vocals sounded a little off, and all that early ‘00s/10s pop shimmer was nowhere to be found.
On the other hand, The Beatles’ 2023 remix and remaster of their greatest hits was phenomenal. The new mixes are incredibly rich, and most importantly fixed the decades old mess of hard stereo panning all over their early releases. Some could argue that the new mixes sanded down some of that elementary rock ’n roll charm, but imo it was absolutely necessary and breathed entirely new life back into an already eternally timeless catalogue.
With remasters coming out left and right these days, it’s important to be discerning of their quality. Some may have had all of the idea with none of the execution.
As long as you preserve the original untouched somewhere, go back and mess around with your early work. Redo it with the knowledge you’ve gained along the way. Fix it, ruin it, do whatever with it. It’s your stuff after all!