Immediately prior to launching a full-time career in 1998 as Creative Director with Day For Night, Eric Scott was Art Director with WorldWest Communications, and worked with recording industry clients Sony Music International and Zebra Records, to produce packaging design for some of their top artists.
In 1995, Sony Music International, in association with Toto‘s representation Fitzgerald-Hartley, issued a powerful comeback campaign directive for the band; the first result was “Tambu“… Inspired by the band’s fascination in invented word-hybrid… “Something which could mean something brand new unto itself,” a cross between “taboo” and the tamboe, an instrument played by percussionist Simon Phillips.
Tambu – the album – was a conceit born of a love for pulp-fiction covers and tawdry bedside reading. The album concept, devised by Eric Scott and Doug Brown (WorldWest Communications), involved a period juke joint setting, in which the band were to be filmed and photographed while performing, for both their album photography and music video “I Will Remember”… The design of the sleeve itself was a laborious affair, involving the creation of a custom typeface “5 4 0” (a distressed variation on Caslon) and many coffee-stained and soiled pages of a lyric booklet; representing the innards of the same pulp novel… This was to be followed in 1997 by a collection of the Toto’s archival “XX“.
Sony Music International | Artistic Direction & Design by Eric Scott
• Toto “Tambu” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 481202)
• Toto “I Will Remember” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 662382)
• Toto “The Other End Of Time” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 489965)
• Toto “If You Belong To Me” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia)
• Toto “Just Can’t Get To You” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia)
• Toto “The Turning Point” (1995 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 662722)
• Toto “XX (1977-1997)” (1997 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 489965)
• Steve Lukather “Luke” (1997 | Sony Music International | Columbia COL 487360)
• Steve Lukather “Broken Machine (Sampler)” (1997 | Sony Music International SAMPCM 4355)
• Steve Lukather “Hate Everything About U” (1997 | Sony Music International | Columbia 664616)
Zebra Records | Zebra Acoustic | Artistic Direction & Design by Eric Scott
• Mark Portmann “No Truer Words” (1996 | ZD 44001)
• Zachary Breaux “Uptown Groove” (1996 | ZD 44002)
• Lee Oskar “So Much In Love” (1997 | ZD 44003)
• David Garfield & Friends “A Tribute to Jeff” (1997 | ZD 44005)
• Rob Mullins “Dance For The New World” (1997 | ZD 44006)
• Pierre Bensusan & Didier Malherbe “Live in Paris” (1997 | ZA 44401)
• Music by Charlie Chaplin “Oh! That Cello” (1998 | ZA 44402)
• Gavin Lurssen “Restless” (1997 | ZA 44403)
• Various Artists “A Song A Day” (1998 | ZA 44404)