Janelle MonáeDirty Computer

Overview

When Janelle Monáe’s team approached us to develop the visual direction for *Dirty Computer*, they brought with them a sprawling set of photographs—hundreds of frames across a dozen costume changes. Rather than lean into the maximalism of the shoot, we found power in restraint. The final cover selects a quiet, in-between moment: Janelle looking down at her phone, candid and unguarded. That vulnerability, captured between takes, came to embody the album’s deeper themes—sexual identity, resistance, and radical self-acceptance. *Dirty Computer* would go on to become a landmark release, with its cover recognized among Paste Magazine’s Top 20 Album Covers of the 2010s.