The Art of Mystique: How @rob_sheridan Became the Art Director of Nine Inch Nails
To see more of Robβs haunting and surreal photography, follow @ rob_sheridan. For music stories from around the world, head to @music.
In 1999, when he was 19, Rob Sheridan (@ rob_sheridan) received an unexpected phone call, inviting him to New Orleans to interview for a job with the rock band Nine Inch Nails and its ringleader, Trent Reznor. The group was looking to extend their online footprint with a new webpage, and had scoured the Internet in search of a candidate. Rob may have lacked the typical professional expertise one might need for a job of that caliber, but he did have the experience, having created a fan site for the band, two years earlier.
βTo get that call out of nowhere just as I started my freshman year of college ββ βHey, I work with Nine Inch Nails, we want to talk to youβ ββ it was completely surreal,β he recalls, 16 years later. βThat doesnβt happen to people. I had no professional experience. I was just a kid. I didnβt know anything that I was doing and all of a sudden these guys are calling me saying they want to talk to me about a job.β
Rob grew up in Seattle, at a time when grunge and Nirvana blanketed the airwaves. But he was more drawn to Trentβs bleak industrial tones. They were grittier and different ββ taking the grunge sound and flipping it on its head by introducing electronic elements.
That made the website job a natural fit for Rob, and not just due to his budding fandom. He always had a knack for creating things, first through drawings and illustrations, and then on the computer, which allowed him to test the boundaries of his imagination. Today that creativity extends to shooting photos in his spare time. His pictures tend to capture different atmospheres and textures ββ dark caves, barking dogs, color-coordinated outfits.
Though Rob is now fully entrenched in the NIN camp, getting noticed for his visual prowess via a fan site was practically unheard of in the late β90s. Itβs difficult to remember now, but there was a time when a fan being able to connect with a famous artist was next to impossible. An enormous chasm existed between popular musicians and their listeners. Mystery and mystique ruled.
Thatβs why Rob was so shocked about the opportunity. Looking back, though, the pairing was serendipitous. He and Trent shared the same creative instincts when it came to music and technology.
βInitially I was just this enthusiastic kid who was going to help out with their new website and hang out down in the studio and take photos,β he says. But then Trent kept throwing him more challenges. βBefore I knew it, I was just the full art director and responsible for all the visuals related to the band. I learned so much in the first couple years of working with Trent ββ like six years of college condensed into two years of insane work.β
What does being the art director of Nine Inch Nails entail? Itβs Robβs job to help translate the bandβs guitar scratches, riffs and electronic tones into haunting album artwork, concert visuals and other projects. When Trent begins a new album, he will play Rob the music and/or talk to him a bit about the concepts behind it. From there, Rob will begin to throw different ideas around. Itβs all about trial and error ββ rounds of back-and-forth before settling on something theyβre both happy with.
βHeβll come back with lots of noes and a couple yeses,β says Rob, of Trent. βEventually we will walk down a field based on a series of reference images and I will present some ideas on where those go and how that connects back to the music. We also, more recently, think about where it goes from there: How does this relate to concert visuals? How does this relate to merchandise?β
Overall, Rob likes to play with restraint. Itβs about getting back to that aforementioned era when artists were still shrouded in mystery. At the same time, itβs also important to work under the umbrella of new technology and social media advancements. (Take, for instance, the alternate reality game they built for the bandβs 2007 release, Year Zero, where fans would run around collecting clues about the recordβs dystopian narrative.) The central focus is to give audiences just enough where they keep coming back for more.
βWe work with other people who are used to doing other big productions, and they just donβt understand: βWe could do this! Why wouldnβt we do that?β And we will say, no, we wonβt do that, thatβs too much,β says Rob. βPeople are wired to think like that now: Anything we can do, letβs pull out all the tricks. We could be doing the craziest, most absurd animated fire on stage, [but] sometimes our coolest effects are done with just the simplest tools.β
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