Commission: CD cover for Merche Corisco

Brief

Context

            CD cover

Content

Portrait of the artist and hand drawn text: title and name

Role of Image

To decorate the CD cover and represent the artist to her audience, including text.

To convey happiness, optimism and wild-soul freedom

Audience

Music lovers of all ages

Stylistic aspect/ Effects

Pop / vintage / 20’s/ hand drawn / more warmth than purely graphic style/ asymmetrical but balanced / sun burst background / bright, happy colours / images in the hair /liberty/ breaking chains

Themes: happiness, wildness, freedom, soulfulness, nature, amazon jungle, open bird cage, flying birds Trombone, pisces fish, guitar, megaphone, skull and cross bones

Tools and Materials

Charcoal (?)drawing with digital manipulation

Size

Standard CD size12x12cm

Format 

            2xdigital: RGB jpeg for web; CMYK tiff/jpeg for print

A mutual friend showed Merche my website as she was looking for an artist to design the CD cover for her forthcoming release. We met to discuss the brief, she sent me some tracks, which were very impressive and then a week later I saw her in concert in a local bar - she is a phenomenal performer- full on sweaty, rocky, passionate and happy; it is such a privilege to have been commissioned by her....I hope I can live up to the task.

I took lots of photos and made some little videos at the concert and despite their poor quality they capture her presence very well so should be very useful while trying to catch the ‘essence’ in the illustration.

I made a few thumbnails and sent them via email

She liked them but felt that her facial expressions during live performance could come across as a bit contorted and so she sent me some images from her website that she particularly liked, along with some research material.

I selected three of the images she sent and made some more thumbnails and a line visual for each pose

LV1

LV2

LV3

I had some really positive feedback about the line visuals, she felt that #1 while beautiful was a bit too ‘good girl’ and that #2 and #3 both were stronger images, I tend to agree but #1 is my favourite so I made another version with a direct gaze trying to make it more seductive. I also cropped the image closer to make it more forceful.

In the end she chose LV2 but asked for longer hair.

I made some coloured line visuals in photoshop 

And after a phone discussion I sent a couple more permutations

I made some minor adjustments (made the name thicker, evened up the hair colour), added some texture and colour in Corel Painter using the airbrush tool and this is the finished cover

I then copied the motifs from the hair and pasted them to separate layers in a new document for use on the other pages, like the back cover shown here.

What did I learn from this project?

I jumped the gun at the beginning, before the client had actually sent me the photos, and then I spent a lot of time working on and developing roughs for my favourite idea without checking for specific feedback so the commission took more ‘man’ hours than were necessary.

Added to that I agreed to do the job for a lower fee than my original quote, partly because I am a student and feel lucky to get paid at all and partly because it was an interesting project with a local up and coming musician whose music I really enjoy and there was an opportunity for greater exposure of my work.

The original ‘contract’ was to just design the front cover but I ended up designing the back cover as well, for no extra fee.

Putting visual ideas into words is tricky at the best of times but in a second language it’s even harder. It worked much better when we actually sat down together to talk things through.

In the end this was a really enjoyable project and Merche is delighted with the results, it turned out that she had commissioned a couple of artists before me but wasn’t happy with the results so she was as relieved as I was when we finally hit the mark.