Janet Boye Jenkins is the creator of the glorious design for Two Hands. It is by no means her first CD cover. Straight out of Pratt Institute (where she was my wife’s irrepressible roommate) she went to work for Elektra records, where she designed dozens of discs. From there she went on to Sony where she designed yet more fantastic CD covers – Her design for the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-1968 Box Set on Columbia was nominated for a Grammy. She went on to design for a variety of other labels, before branching out and working at Nike and Sesame Workshop. I was able to lure her back into the music business for this project 🙂
As a young child, Janet was into crafts. Graphic design was a logical career step. But her inspiration comes from many places: listening to architects talk about their work; evocative movies titles; walking in NYC and Tokyo. She says “I once saw an Alexander Calder show that blew me away, he just never seemed to stop creating. This is so not me but it is inspiring, the idea of creating without needing everything to be a perfectly complete piece.”
Some of her favorite jobs? In the music business, she claims that I am fun to work with, and loved Keb Mo because he was such a pleasure. “He let you do your job. And he had enough success that the label allowed it.” One of her favorite Nike projects was working on a beautiful retail space in Kyoto, which “allowed me to be in Kyoto during Cherry Blossom season. How could I not love that :-)”