part one: the illustration
The idea began with a very random thought of making something similar to a piece of digital art I had drawn a while back. In my mind’s eye, something like this with a blindfold to represent our artist and the music video would look great while also creating a sense of brand image.
esha liked the idea:
I briefly questioned if my drawing skills were good enough for this, but Esha and I both agreed that using art and illustrations as a creative choice in our work would definitely enhance what we perceived to be our project’s existing strengths.
Momentarily giving up on my obsession with purple, I used the colour scheme which coincided with the dominant colours of our music video. Esha also agreed that we should keep the fonts for everything consistent.
Therefore, I made a key of sorts that I could refer back to when assembling the front cover among other things:
I initially thought I should redraw the old version of my own drawing with a blindfold. While I was doing this, Esha noted that the figure in the illustration looked rather masculine and that was true; after all, the reference image for it was literally a man. Hence, I decided to scrap this version and start entirely anew, using Tamino’s picture as a vague reference only for the pose and anatomy of my drawing and trying to make the illustration look a little more feminine.
The initial inspiration for the discarded rough illustration was this image of singer-songwriter Tamino:
I connected my laptop to a drawing tablet and used Krita to create the illustration because it’s free and I am pretty comfortable with using it for making digital art. One small problem I came across: the version of Krita I previously had was a little old and did not have the features that would allow me to make a time-lapse of the entire drawing process (namely, it did not provide the option of recorder dockers); since I wanted to document as much of the process as possible, I installed the necessary updates that would allow me to make a video of the illustration’s development (i.e. Krita version 5.1.5 and FFmpeg).
Hardware + Software Used:
Huion HS64 Pen Tablet
My ancient HP laptop
Krita
FFmpeg
After consulting Esha, I changed the colour of the lineart from grey to a white/beige tone which made it more prominent against the darker background.
Once I was fully satisfied with the illustration, I exported it as a png file along with an mp4 timelapse video of the drawing process.
The process timelapse:
(Please note that this timelapse also includes the parts in the drawing process when I changed the lineart to different colours and saved each one as a transparent image; this was done so we could re-use the illustration for other purposes in our music promotion package, such as merchandise posts for Instagram.)
part two: the front and back covers
To make the front cover, I used canva, ensuring that the colours and fonts remained consistent throughout. The black border not only evoked a feeling of entrapment for the figure in the illustration (much like our music video’s central figure), but also coincided with our audience’s preferences as the most popular among the album covers I had included in our research survey is the one below with, you guessed it, a black border.
Our cover:
Audience's pick:
Esha and I briefly considered adding the artist’s name to the front cover, but I was of the opinion that it might disrupt the symmetry of the entire cover and Esha eventually agreed too. While I was contemplating over whether I should or shouldn't include the artist’s name on the front cover, a quick scroll through my Spotify pages eased my tension; turns out that noticeable percentage of alt/indie artists nowadays do not put their names on their album covers, and some feature no text at all. The fact that all information related to an album is now displayed next to the cover on streaming services could be a reason why some album covers retain attention through their visuals alone instead of artist and album names.
Here are a couple of alternative/indie album covers that do not feature the artist’s name:
I had already compiled a list of potential track names and listed them at the back of the cover along with other essentials such as copyright information, a barcode I downloaded from Google, and marker-like graphics (also drawn in Krita) that resembled our music video which shows a book with blacked-out lines. Featuring elements like the woman in the blindfold and the chiselled-tip marker lines really underscored the sense of branding that tied the digipak and music video together pretty well in my opinion. Importantly, I kept the copyright text the same as what had been written on the physical TXT album I own, switching out their company’s name for our own record label’s name.
Esha and I mutually agreed that using lowercase letters only could be considered a suitable creative choice for mrs midas as it has become quite a common occurrence among alternative/indie artists, such as girl in red and wave to earth.
The name of the album was also among such random words that I put in our long list: antinarrative. Embodying a sense of rebellion associated with alternative/indie music and women opposing the patriarchy, it perfectly fits the brand of our music promotion package as a whole.
part three: spine
To make the spine, I simply wrote the name of the album, added the same marker-esque line around the text to keep the theme consistent, and added Moonage Records’ logo to the bottom.
part four: CD
Re-using the same illustration, font, colours, and copyright information, I made the CD in canva too.
part five: the insides
I did not think adding something extravagant to the inlay behind the CD would be a good idea as it might take the attention away from the deliberately minimalistic disc. To make up for this, I modified a free-to-use canva illustration and wrote the lyrics from Muddy Waters around it to add to the page adjacent to the CD so the star of the album (i.e. the main single, Muddy Waters) could be highlighted.
Esha’s delightful approval caught in 4k:
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