How Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory Design Helped Define The Band

How Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory Design Helped Define The Band




It's an image of contrast: a soldier with dragonfly wings rendered in bleeding graffiti sprays, the literal personification of its title. On the very cover artwork of Linkin Park's masterful, ground-moving debut Hybrid Theory, the whole concept is there: loud guitars with hip-hop beats, rap verses between screaming melodic choruses, a test of duality. A hybrid theory.


Supplemented with a street-art logo, the cover came to dictate the visual segment of band's breakthrough era as much as it echoed the sound of the music itself. Released in October 2000, Hybrid Theory became the best-selling album of 2001, capitalizing on the freight train of momentum the musical group had built from its early live shows and diligent studio crafting. It's since become one of the best-selling debuts of all time, stacked with a few of the band's signature songs, including the indelible "In the End." A new Hybrid Theory 20th anniversary release, out today (October 9), unspools that history with unearthed demos and extra artwork from the era, including work done by Frank Maddocks, currently VP Creative Services at Warner Records, who worked with the musical group to finalize the art of the original release.


"I just know that at the time, stylistically, it just looked cool," Maddocks tells MTV News about the design. "I think that there's maybe a nod to sort of some Russian Constructivism in there. There's maybe some Shepard Fairey sneaking through."


That mixture of styles came from conversations Maddocks and the label's creative team had with the musical group, who'd initially gone by the moniker Hybrid Theory before settling on Linkin Park. Maddocks mentioned vocalist/producer Mike Shinoda and DJ Joe Hahn — both visual artists themselves — arrived to their first meeting with books and magazines prepared to use as reference points for the album. "It was certainly rare," he mentioned. "Just sort of seeing that much thought and that much focus and that much intent from the musical group was really impressive."


Maddocks mentioned his visual work with Deftones, including the design for their seminal 2000 album White Pony, helped attract Linkin Park to wanting to work with his team. In the 20 years since, he's continued to work with both bands, leading the charge for Deftones's latest, Ohms, released last month.


To commemorate the new Hybrid Theory anniversary release, Maddocks broke down how they finalized the Hybrid Theory artwork with each other, how fan tattoos keep it alive (especially immediately after singer Chester Bennington's 2017 death), and what's special about visiting the old material.


Mick Hutson/Redferns
MTV News: It seems the musical group knew how they wanted to symbolize themselves visually, yet how did what would become the final artwork for Hybrid Theory come about, based on that conversation you had?


Frank Maddocks: I think through just only several conversations, we sort of came up with this sort of a militant vibe. We were all serious about Banksy at the time, and stenciling, and sort of this propaganda, sort of underground movement of work. I think that was something that we all really [clung] to, and thus the idea of a stencil some group kind of a figure or a soldier or a militant vibe came across and then it seemed like, "OK, well what can we mix this with? How do we showcase the other side of what this is? Because on its own, that's a really cool image, nevertheless we hope to sort of do a double take. We desire to have a juxtaposition something sort of more mindful and emotional with this sort of more aggressive sort of icon."


I literally have the sketchbooks of mine still where I'm writing notes down of possible things that it might would be. At one point, I was writing butterfly wings, this and that. We fancied the idea of those delicate dragonfly wings, and then I fancied the idea sort of almost making it look like someone had painted them on the street like you had the soldier initially, however then someone came along and sort of added to that piece. That was sort of the desired effect, was this sort of push and pull of images.


MTV News: What were your impressions of their music at the time?


Maddocks: I remember hearing the music for the opening time and really being blown away and totally understanding how this music made sense for the time, how it made sense as them as a musical group amongst their peers. We all understood it. I gotta mention, it was astonishing hearing the music, and that album is still incredible. I don't think any of us had any vision that of course it could be as big as it is, so that was a pretty exhilarating thing to sort of watch the world sort of embrace this album. And then seeing them live... We all got invited down to be able to see them play at the Whisky [a Go Go]. I think they were still called Hybrid Theory at the time. I mean, they were just flawless. It was inconceivable. It was almost like just listening to the record.


MTV News: The album became the best-selling album of 2001. How much did that success sort of influence what you ended up doing with them in the future on, mention, 2003's follow-up Meteora and 2004's Collision Course [with Jay-Z] and beyond?


Maddocks: I think I've heard the musical group mention this, also, yet you're not so much aware of how big something is up until you've had some time to sort of process everything, sort of step away from it. Those records and everything that came with those records came so fast and there was so much work to do, that you never really had downtime to sort of mention, oh, wow, isn't this really special? And look — 100,000 people have this image tattooed on them, and that's really cool.


I'd mention that the success of the imagery only maybe gave me confidence in that I was headed in the correct direction for the musical group and the fan base. Any time Mike gives me a number of buzzwords to go off on or something, he is aware that I'm going to riff on that and take it exponentially more than just the few things that he gave me just because we've shared so several years together.


So Meteora, that was — again, with the success of Hybrid Theory, we were afforded a lot more sort of real estate to make some really grandiose imagery, which was a lot of fun. Collision Course was a lot of fun, also, working with David Choe, who's an illustrator who's gone on to be a remarkable fine artist.


MTV News: You brought up fans and fan tattoos. Such an enormous segment of the band's fan base is really wearing their fandom in the same way that Chester's flame tattoos on his wrists were such a large segment of him and his whole personality. Have you seen fan art and fan tattoos especially that have stuck out to you?


Maddocks: I have of several bands that I've worked with, and Linkin Park probably has the most. I mean, it's funny as the art that I've made is on millions of records, certainly, and that's so cool, however it sort of is the coolest thing ever once you visualize somebody with your art tattooed on them. That's just like this astonishing sort of tribute. Naturally, I know it's as the music is so special to them and I'm happy to just lend a hand to that, although I got to think somewhere, if the art was really lame, it probably wouldn't be tattooed. I still get so stoked on seeing this most simplest of things, like a tattoo or a sticker on someone's vehicle or a T-shirt.


MTV News: And along those same lines, I know the 20th anniversary edition has new art and also the unreleased material. Can you talk a little about what's included?


Maddocks: It's funny you bring up the tattoos because I actually did a number of sections in the book that are serious about fan tattoos and all of the different renditions of — mostly, it's the album cover. There's some fun stuff like that for the fans included in the book. There's tons of never-before-seen or very seldom-seen pictures from that era. There's some new artwork or some sort of revamped artwork from the day put in there. Everything is sort of seen through a new lens.


The way I sort of design things is that if we're doing something 20 years later, even if I'm taking older designs and photos, I still desire to treat them in a new way. Even if you've seen some of this stuff, you've haven't seen it in this way and collected in this setting. I think that it's going to be really special for a lot of the fans. Guys were looking by way of the book the other day, the guys in the musical group, and then some of those don't actually remember some of that stuff, the pictures and all that stuff, so it's a wonderful time capsule for them. I think from the super fan to the casual fan, people will appreciate it.









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