Music Album
Kontra K "Aus dem Licht in den Schatten zurück"
Together with the artist "KONTRA K" and his team, I worked on his latest album "Aus dem Licht in den Schatten zurück." Alongside the album, an extensive deluxe box came together as well. The goal was to take his story and frame it through the fairy-tale lens of "Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf," brought into a contemporary context and carried through the entire campaign's external communication.
Art Direction / Illustration, Campagne, Editorial, Web
Deluxe Box
The deluxe box carries the fairy tale right on its surface: deep black, broken up by a glowing red illustration that shows Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in an old, painterly visual language – menacing rather than childlike. “KONTRA K” lettering on the front, the embossed logo running down the spine – the album artwork becomes its own standalone object, making the story felt before you’ve even opened the box.
Vinyl & CD Cover
On vinyl and CD, the wolf motif becomes a pack: masked figures with glowing eyes line up one after another, drenched in red and black – a threat that runs across the entire inner sleeve rather than staying confined to the cover. On the CD, KONTRA K himself merges with the wolf, half human, half animal, surrounded by the pack. The accompanying booklet carries the visual language forward with flame accents and dense text blocks, so vinyl, CD, and booklet work as one continuous narrative object rather than loose individual pieces.
Graphic Novel
An illustrated fairy-tale book was created alongside the album, completely retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, carried through in yellow and black. Every spread alternates between running text and large-scale illustration: sometimes a drawn scene, sometimes a photo collage built from black-and-white imagery, sometimes a pure flat shape like the open clawed hand or the jagged wolf shadow. The visual language stays raw and uncomfortable throughout – burning cities, a jungle full of watching eyes, hands reaching out of the dark – turning the children’s fairy tale into a dark parable about fear, protection, and trust that runs consistently through the whole book.
Single Cover Design
Each single gets its own cover, while content-wise every cover picks up a different image from the Little Red Riding Hood story and translates it on its own terms: the masked wolf pack, the burning city pedestal, the bared predator’s jaw, the torn portrait collage. Sometimes graphic and reduced, sometimes a dark photomontage – the visual language stays consistently raw and high-contrast, so each cover works on its own while still clearly reading as part of the same story.
