Healthy in Paranoid Times - Packaging and Artwork

Packaging and Artwork

In January 2005, the band contacted Dallas, Texas based artist Grant Smith, whom the band had known for nine years, to paint an album cover for Healthy in Paranoid Times. The finished product was a 20-by-20 inch oil painting of a man sitting in a chair in an all-white room with his back facing the audience. The cover chosen was the ninth one he painted for the project. Smith discussed the inspiration for the cover after he visited the band at their Maui recording studio. "We talked about the world we live in and the issues that face our culture. Issues such as political propaganda, a sensationalist media, blind faith and micro-macrocosm were a few of the things we discussed. We liked the idea of a man with his back turned to the world, in a white blank room." The concept was further discussed on his web page. "Is the whiteness purity and peace that he seeks, or the stark cold white of a mental ward? "It's just a guy who has had enough, everything has gotten too heavy and he needs a break from it all. He hasn't given up or surrendered, just created an enlightened microcosm. The minimal white area surrounding the figure is more important than the figure itself, being that it can represent health or paranoia." The image is repeated on the disc itself.

Smith also painted a portrait of each member of the band. "Our Lady Peace asked me to do paintings of each band member. I wanted them to be inward, reflective, powerful and multilayered. The individual shapes on their faces represent the depth of the man. Raine asked me to paint a bandaged head representing the wounds that were accumulated in spending 3 years, recording over 50 tracks, and almost breaking up had on the band." These portraits were sold online from Our Lady Peace's website.

The album's liner notes contain no lyrics but a link to them online is given. Instead, it is filled with a several photographs taken by John Wellman inside the abandoned Whitby Psychiatric Hospital in Whitby, Ontario. The small band photo on the back cover was taken by Charman Baehler at the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles. On the pages are lists of statistical events which occurred during the making of Healthy in Paranoid Times such as how many days, studios and gigabytes of storage space were used for recording as well as events in the world such as 9.8 million people having died from AIDS. The last page in the booklet lists several websites including War Child.ca and Adbusters.com among others. The album credits are placed on the CD's tray insert.