For my next Urinine Records assignment, No Escape (A Tribute to Journey), I knew two things: using my photography wasn't an option, and I wasn't an illustrator. Journey's classic album covers, illustrated by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, had established a visual language that I wanted to acknowledge. So I went looking for an illustrator whose work might fit the bill.

I found an illustration by Mark Garlick called Mining Energy from a Black Hole. While the title was plainspoken about what it depicted, I wasn't particularly concerned with what was actually happening. I liked that it evoked Journey's space imagery without attempting to replicate them—and that it was a pretty literal interpretation of No Escape.

I had a mischievous idea for the cover, too: I wanted it to look like it might actually be a Journey record. Negativland's U2 EP must have been crawling around in the back of my mind, and I was jazzed by the idea of slightly misrepresenting the product, even if I didn't want the same legal outcome raining down.

As the label owner, Sid was less enthusiastic, worrying about the implications of people actually mistaking the album for a new Journey release—even if the back cover clearly identified what would be found inside. We settled on a sticker identifying the full title and participating bands, applied to the outside of the shrink-wrap. While I'm sure Sid didn't welcome the additional expense, it addressed his concern without compromising my design.

For the rest of the package, I took the space theme all the way. Public-domain imagery from NASA and JPL appears throughout, with extensive color manipulation and layering to bring it into the same visual world as Garlick's illustration. In keeping with the vast emptiness of space, I kept the typography and other information as minimal as I could get away with. Even the back cover dispensed with the usual track listing and label and legal info.