Album Artwork

There are a lot of peripheral-type tasks associated with this music project, such as creating the concept and artwork for each week's album. This is not really a "task"...it's as much of a fun/creative challenge as the actual recording. Over the years I have stockpiled an original list of "Names and Titles" that contains over 1,200 entries. I thought these titles might come in handy someday for: short story titles, movie titles, song titles, character names, etc. It's also just plain amusing for me (I once created a compilation of fake album covers and titled the collection "History's Greatest Fictional Bands"). I also have an extensive collection of photography, illustrations, and random concepts (which I started in 1996). Still, there are some weeks (like this past one) where the final art concept and design didn't happen until hours before the deadline.

In the past I've done these design projects alone, but it's been great having Carly's help lately (my wife). Carly is also a photographer, and she has great post-production editing skills too. I explained a few concepts for this design, but she's mostly responsible for how this one looks. The original idea was to use two kids talking through a homemade phone (two cans attached with string). We used Brandon and Allison's kids as models (Parker and Ethan), but the idea didn't come across as well as we'd hoped. The final design for "Life According to Others" (now available online) is a combination of photos. Several individual people/photographs were combined and then silhouetted, and then she altered and inserted a photo that she took during a trip to Honduras. The final look has the exact "feel" that I was hoping for. Thanks, Carly!

This next week's concept/design is still being decided. I have a few title ideas ("Alluring Catastrophes" and "Simple Days of Jousting"), but I need to hone in on the overall message and musical style first. I'd better do that now.

-Matthew