CD cover: The Safe Harbour

The Safe Harbour, a band from southern England, asked me to give them a very "goth/emo" album cover. The one they chose is below; it was fun to do, even though it doesn't match their musical style whatsoever!

CD covers: PRX

PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, asked if I'd do not just one, but ten albums in their new digital release lineup. This ended up being a lot less work than it sounded like at first, because they already had a new corporate identity and lots of Illustrator art to work with. Once they approved my basic layout, I was able to bust the other 9 out in an afternoon. They got a sizable discount for bulk and for being awesome people to work with. I hope they need more work in the future... these guys are dream clients.

CD client: Nektarios

Electronica artist Nektarios needed the art for his debut iTunes single as soon as possible; I had to turn his design around in a day or so to make his deadline. After a lot of rapid-fire back and forth (and one of the most difficult masking jobs I've ever done on the girl on the right, who was photographed against a green shrub), here's the end product:


He was happy enough with the final design that he asked if I could turn around a logo design for his record label by the next day, as well. Yep!

CD covers: simple ones

Sometimes a client's got a very simple cover in mind, and for iTunes, these are sometimes the best, anyway. A simple design in a tiny space can be really effective.

Lyrikal - "Here's my photo. I like silver and black."




The Precisions - "How about an mp3 player next to a jukebox?"



Scott Zartman - "I like this photo..."

CD cover: Ghazelles

The Ghazelles had a very simple request for their cover design: a gazelle being kicked in the face by a man doing a flying karate kick.

Can do!

CD cover: T.O.B.I.A.S.

A hiphop musician named T.O.B.I.A.S. asked for his album cover to be "something simple and good" that would play on the album title, Magyver (sic)-- "like music equipment, mics, speakers and stuff".

He sent this photo to use, which had a great background and lighting, but was unfortunately out of focus.



I was really stumped with what to do with this. So I started by fiddling with his photo and accidentally applying a Stamp filter to it in Photoshop, which unexpectedly looked great. For the "MacGyver" effect I added some ramshackle clipart of speakers, music equipment, buildings, etc, and gave his name a funky 3D effect. I ended up sending four different concepts, but the first sketch -- the one he chose -- was done within half an hour of opening Photoshop. Sometimes these things just fall together right off the bat.

CD cover: Sully

A musician named Sully asked for his CD cover to have "an image of a bottle of tequila with the full moon behind it" to go with his album Tequila at Night.

Since nothing like that exists on stockphoto sites, I was Photoshop bound. The moon was a cheap stock image and the sky was a cinch to create; luckily my roommate had bought a bottle of Patron tequila recently, so I shot it in my bathroom against a black dress shirt.




But a bottle doesn't just float in space with the full moon behind it, so I had to give it a setting, too. Having no idea what sort of music Sully plays, I figured tequila would go well with a nighttime party setting, but since the bottle and moon (and title) still needed to be the focus, I figured a carpet of sparkling lights surrounded by mountains would look good. So I found this postcard shot of Rio:




Great. Now for lots of compositing work and fiddling with transparency effects. I stuck the bottle on a "table" made of a piece of marble-textured glass.

The result made the client very happy: