For this project I was tasked with creating a sleeve and label design for a fictitious vinyl of our own conceptualization. The genre, design and themes of the album were of our own choice. The overall goal of the assignment was to further our understanding of design principles and our ability to composite images and utilize Adobe Photoshop.
I sought to create an vinyl cover that felt it would fit within the genre of alternative / indie music with some psychedelic influences. I primarily drew influences from the artists Radiohead, Hippo Campus and especially Mac DeMarco. Many of the album covers I drew inspiration from play around with some visual effects and stylization in order to create a unique feel and experiment with text further which I attempted to capture in my vinyl design.
I went through a few ideas initially when I was in my ideation phase and spent a lot of time exploring different album covers and adobe stock images that I considered utilizing at first. I ultimately did not end up working with these designs as I didn’t feel very strongly towards them and felt they lacked a strong visual identity.
The design of the front cover came from a stock image that I gravitated towards as I felt it had a similar visual aesthetic to the albums I was using as inspiration. I warped the type in order to fit the rocks surrounding the subject and added a duplicated overlay of the base image to create a surreal feeling to the cover.
While the front cover remained nearly identical besides a couple of changes, the design of the back of the vinyl underwent many changes in order to find a layout that was both easily readable and fit with the overall style of the album. Which I ultimately achieved by liquefying the text in a left aligned paragraph format.
