Flipping through the forty-five page booklet that comes with No Age's album Nouns, you get a vivid portrait of the L.A. experimental rock band's typical tour. In one shot, a stack of speakers and amps lay on the rain-soaked concrete, looking like they might tip over. In another, a packed crowd pumps their arms in the air while one lone girl holds her hands over her ears. A slightly blurry photo shows a young couple making out, post-show, in a storage room, just beyond the reach of empty bottles and cans. For any punk band who's ever played a house party, this is what life looks like: unsteady and up-close and loud as hell. And Brian Roettinger has turned that life into art. "We wanted it to be about nouns: places they've played and people they've seen and things they've done," says the designer, who went on the road with No Age to create the packaging for Nouns. "That's much easier to do it in sort of a multi-page document than one single image."

Roettinger's sleeve designs often feel like art collections. His cover for Liars' self-titled album comes with ransom-note-style liner notes and a matching tote bag. His series of five No Age EPs combine stark images — one shows the broken car windshield where No Age's guitarist wiped out while skateboarding — with each letter from the band's name spelled out on the back. Once, Roettinger even created twenty-four different sleeves for a seven-inch split between No Age and Liars, a new design for each city on the bands' co-headlined tour. And his handmade artistry is every bit as punk-rock as the music. "The hardest thing to do with digital music is create a desire to purchase it," says Roettinger. "So I had the idea to change the focus: someone buys a book or a catalog, and they just get a CD. Maybe that will make people want to buy records again." MELISSA MAERZ

Roettinger's series of five No Age EPs:

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