Jerome de Maria Doesn't Think You Can Separate Music from the Artwork

Interplay, showcased at Spazju Kreattiv for ICA Festival 2026, is a magazine that puts graphic design and music side by side, featuring interviews with Maltese musicians Mark Abela, Samwel Mallia, and Ben Bailey. I spoke to Jerome, a graduating BA (Hons) Graphic Design student at MCAST, about his dissertation project, and why he believes design is a pivotal, often invisible, part of how we experience music.

S: What inspired you to revolve your project around music, especially as a graphic design student?

J: From a young age, I've always been into listening to and collecting music, especially physical formats, being vinyl records, and CDs. And a big inspiration of mine is researching the designers and artists behind these album covers, posters, and other visual materials, and exploring the connection between them and the musicians and what kind of brings music together as a whole.

S: So, was there a specific album cover, a poster, or any other design form that was music related, that you kept coming back to during research or that was actually your specific inspiration to do this entire project?

J: My biggest inspiration is David Carson, a graphic designer, who's most well-known for Ray Gun magazine, which was a music and pop culture kind of magazine that combined both information and art together into one thing. It featured names of David Bowie, Bjork, and other left-field, punk and alternative musicians Researching this magazine influenced the style of Interplay, and even how I collected data, and showcased it.

S: So, the concept of your magazine is similar, combining art and information, which I think you did a really good job at. It’s really, really interesting. And, on the topic of these older artists, what year were your favourite pieces produced design-wise?

J: For the design aspect of this magazine, I think I would look a lot at Blonde (2016) by Frank Ocean, as the cover for the vinyl and CD influenced the way that I shaped this magazine a lot. And even some of the works from Aphex Twin, his alternative and minimalistic approach, mixed together.

S: For you personally — because I think everyone's experience with this is different — how does the visual side of music, whether that's album art or something else, shape the way you experience the music?

J: You cannot see just the music. It's both the music and the visuals that create the musician and the art that you experience from both album covers to concerts, and there are the ties in between. You cannot have a metal album without the metal aesthetic. For example, ACDC, or Metallica, or Kiss, with those rugged fonts, and dark, gloomy aesthetics. But then you look at pop albums, for example, Madonna, Zara Larsson, or Pink Pantheress, who are popular these days, which have a much brighter and simplistic look to their genre. It's looking both at the visuals and the music, combining into one. It's what makes music, music. It's not just the audio.

S: And what do you think of an artist that on purpose chooses to have the artwork for their music, completely contrasting to the genre?

J: I think someone that's a very, very popular example at the moment would be Charlie XCX with her album Brat. When that album cover came out, everybody was so shocked and weirded out by how ugly, quote unquote, it is compared to most pop album covers. Meanwhile, she's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. And the way that that simplistic, ugly design changed a lot of how graphic design is looked at in music right now, and even a lot of influences, even locally, kind of take from it. It just makes me think that sometimes you need to bend the rules a bit to make the biggest impact.

S: That's very interesting, because Brat has actually become a whole brand now, and people see it, and they immediately think of Charli, when they first saw it, they were like, ‘this is not like Charli at all’. And now it's become her entire thing.

Now, you were just talking about how there's a kind of ritual of the album cover fitting with the music, and there's a very human aspect to that. But AI is an inevitable conversation, right? Every day I'm seeing AI generated album covers, so, do you think that’s changing the authenticity of the music?

J: Definitely. The issue is that the people who do use AI album cover art, treat it less as its own individual thing, adding onto the music, and more as just a label for the music, something that's just there. It’s not adding anything to the creativity or the humanity of the music. And it's kind of creating a wall for creatives to work with each other and limiting the potentials of creativity of both musicians, designers, and artists.

S: I think what people may fail to see is that the music industry is not comprised of just the musicians, it's comprised of photographers, videographers, the concept of music videos, and even music videos are getting AI generated nowadays.

J: Everybody has a basic understanding of music history, but not enough people know about what goes into making the visuals of the music. So, if I name these graphic designers, for example, Paula Scher, who worked for CBS Records, not a lot of people know about her, even though she worked on a lot of album covers. It's kind of hard to see this lack of knowledge, so I want to push this project to bring more awareness and hopefully get more people to research this field.

S: Was there a specific thing you learned through your research that really stuck out to you or changed your viewpoint on something?

J: Yes, actually. So, in my magazine, I have three separate interviews with Ben Bailey, who is a guitarist and singer for Vinyl Paradise, Ira Losco, Mark Abela, who is the front man of punk band Brodu, and Samwel Mallia, who is both a graphic designer and a musician himself, being in both Bila and Eyes to Argus. From what I had talked to them about, it's surprising to see that their influence was not coming from Malta itself, but actually outside of Malta. For example, Samwel currently works in music and design, and his inspirations came all the way from Dragon Ball Z. Mark got inspired by left-field music, especially artists like Aphex Twin and all these kinds of alternative singers and artists. Ben Bailey was inspired by Guitar Hero, the video game, to start playing music. So, it's really interesting to see how outside culture, that comes into Malta, makes these artists.

S: What section of the magazine would you say you loved working on the most?

J: I think it was realistically just the interview section. Speaking to Ben, Mark, and Samwel, was so in depth, and it taught me a lot, not just about how they create music, but even local history, that not a lot of people know about. And it's interesting to see how these people have created music over the past decade or two, and how they've kind of created Maltese history without even realizing it. And I think it's something that needs to be talked more about. Music and journalism, being put together, needs to be more of a common thing, where it's less just promoting music, but even talking about the process and the meaning behind these songs, the meaning behind these artists and what they do and what they bring to Malta as a country, and what we can push further in terms of creativity.

S: And now you’ve created a tangible archive of these artists and their work and their influence on the country, which is amazing. Tying directly into what you just said, this kind of combination between design and journalism. Interviewing people probably isn't something you do often as a graphic designer. What was the experience like stepping outside of your usual bubble of designing to interview people?

J: So, journalism has always been a thing at the back of my head, which I've loved. My grandfather, Saviour Casabene, had worked for the Times of Malta during his time as an artist and as a businessman, where he had written some pieces for them talking about art. In secondary school, I had worked with TVM for my work experience for 2 weeks. It taught me a lot about journalism, and even earlier this year, where I attended the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It pushed me a lot into understanding how journalism works and how to be an effective journalist and ask the important questions that need answers. So while it was very difficult as a process, going from graphic designer to an interviewer, I think it was a not a totally out of world experience for me, but something that I had worked on, worked on, worked on, until I got to this point where I think I did very well. Even the interviewees themselves, were really amazed at what I had asked them and what we had talked about.

S: You seem to have had an overall very positive and rewarding experience creating this magazine, but would you say that there was a big struggle that you faced trying to make it come to life and how did you push through?

J: The biggest struggle was just the time limit when it came to the dissertation and submission. There was an issue where my lecturer had an accident, and for about a month and a half, I realistically couldn't do much work, because I had that lack of guidance that I really needed. So, there were a lot of last-minute changes through the magazine in terms of editing, writing, and even design changes that were made. When I look back now, there are some things about it that I would change, but I think acknowledging these difficulties and these kind of errors, in a way, kind of make the magazine more unique, and more adhering to that kind of punk and artistic kind of look that, especially David Carson aimed for, both art information, and creating a beautiful chaos of sorts.

S: We had already spoken about somebody who's a graphic designer or interested in this world picking this up and saying, oh, wow, I didn't know that this field of work was a possibility. But is there anything else that you hope someone working in either music or design or even journalism takes away from this? Or even somebody who is not in any of these worlds, what do you hope that they can still take away from Interplay?

J: The magazine serves kind of two purposes. Education and artistic enjoyment. I think overall, what I hope from Interplay as a whole, it teaches people about the history of design and music, both in an international aspect and a national aspect, inspiring even those outside of design, music, and journalism to contribute further, and maybe even delve into these fields. And overall, I hope that it pushes more for people to talk about the artistic and visual side of music. and inspire more in-depth conversations and even serve as a record of Maltese history within music, as it's not talked about enough. And I think it is something that we need to start teaching, to students and even talking more about in the media.

S: Creating album covers for artists, is it something you'd want to do?

J: I have always wanted to do it, and honestly, I think at some point in my life, I will probably do it. I love album covers. I love CDs, I love all of this kind of design world. I think the best thing about design and music put together is just the conversations and the collaboration between me, the artists, and the musician and what we create together. And overall just making pieces that you can look at the cover and listen to the music and say, wow, this really reflects what's going on as an overall experience.

S: So if there's any artists looking for a designer, I can send them your way!

---

ICA Festival 2026 exhibitions are open until August 16th. For more on Jerome's work, or to order a copy of Interplay for yourself, visit his website here and reach out through the contact details provided.