Some thoughts on reinterpretation and redesign (and death metal)

Earlier this year, one of my favorite albums got a rerelease. Opeth’s Blackwater Park, in my opinion, is one of the best albums ever created. You should really listen to it, even if you’re not into death metal. Source For progressive death metal, it’s moody, it’s bleak, it’s spacious and ethereal. It’s why I was surprised the rerelease in 2026 received a new album design. For me, the original really captured the feeling and mood of the album. Icy, bleak, misty, unresolved.

The new album cover has the same subject; a swampy wood with twisted trees and unrecognizable figures in the distance.

The new album is much darker and creepy. Now I am all for dark and creepy, but the ‘reinterpretation’ didn’t feel right for me. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but the new visuals do not match the album for me.

01 Perfection of the same idea

Reinterpretation happens a lot in art. Van Gogh painted the same sunflowers seven times between August 1888 and January 1889. Some of those were near-identical copies made for family, but in others he used the same subject as an excuse to try new color combinations each time. I am not an art historian so the interpretation of these works is probably a lot more nuanced than my limited ability allows.

Matisse did two versions of the same still life a year apart, Still Life with Purro I and II, identical composition, and you can watch him change style from solid thick brushwork into pointillism.

Leonardo painted Virgin of the Rocks twice, twenty years apart, though not by choice. The first version got tangled in a payment dispute with the confraternity that commissioned it, and the second exists because the argument dragged on for two decades before he agreed to finish it.

An even more extreme version of this exists within Orthodox icon painting. It’s been described as a conservative craft in which the painter is essentially a tool for replication. What matters most is fidelity to the image that came before. Generation after generation, the same composition redrawn by different hands across centuries.

There is no merit in inventing a new Christ or a new Theotokos. Faithful repetition, created by someone with a steadier hand than the last person, is the holy grail. The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea are often quoted as saying that icon-making follows the tradition handed down by the Fathers rather than the invention of the individual painter.

02 Redesign and reinterpretation have different goals

When something gets redesigned, for example a banking app, the old version doesn’t get to stick around as a valid alternative. Nobody gets to keep the old app installed next to the new one out of preference. This is why redesigns are always complex to roll out: people hate change. Nielsen Norman Group’s advice to design teams is blunt about it: users hate change, full stop, regardless of whether the new design is actually better. Source

This summer, we redesigned the Rabo App. A redesign at this scale takes a tremendous effort by a large group of people; designers, creative direction, engineers, product managers, marketing, and many others all working towards the same thing: the new replacing the old.

It’s the right call here: the app serves millions of people daily, and it has to evolve with their needs, the bank’s systems, and the times. That’s where redesign is different from reinterpretation.

The old version is finished, closed, over, done. That doesn’t mean the old was bad. It was very good at the time it was released. But context changes, and sometimes redesigns are needed to stay up to date, set the stage for upcoming things, evolve with the brand, or improve things under the hood. There are many other reasons to do a redesign. Source

03 Some ideas need time

A reinterpretation is different. Sometimes the idea needs time to catch up with the person. Maybe the concept was really good, the execution just wasn’t there yet. Maybe you want several versions to give to your family, like van Gogh. Maybe the original idea needs refining for it to become really good.

Sometimes, a good idea needs to wait for a future version of you to become incredible.

To go back and iterate on an old idea is not a bad thing. You have greater skill, new context, and a fresh perspective. What matters is what happens to the original once the new version exists.

Reinterpretation, done right, doesn’t replace the old version. It just adds another version to stand next to it. The old one is still allowed to be the version some people prefer, still allowed to be correct on its own terms.

04 Where that leaves me

My feelings for the Blackwater Park reissue resolve in accepting this as a reinterpretation. The cover is fine. Currently, both album covers are still available side-by-side. One of my favorite reinterpretations is Cradle of Filth’s 2019 version of Cruelty and the Beast. The 1998 version is a masterpiece, but riddled with poor mixing and recording. The 2019 version largely solves that: it is incredible. I do enjoy the 1998 version too, for its raw and more visceral nature. Source But time will tell if the reissue starts taking over its position as the cover, if the old will be replaced and archived. Then it becomes a redesign instead of a reinterpretation.

I would hate that.

I reinterpret my own work as well. Back in 2018-2019 my illustrations weren’t particularly good, but I like those original ideas. Going back to one of those pieces now isn’t correcting a mistake I made back then. For me, it’s having a second attempt at the same idea.

What changed is me. I learned new techniques, found better ways of doing things, and developed a better sense of taste. I am giving old ideas a new interpretation with all the things I learned along the way.

So go back. Find old sketches, drafts, or ideas you’ve shelved because you weren’t good enough for them yet.

You might be now.