Album cover
(Logo design / graphic design)
1. Client
Dazzleship
2. Project timeframe
April 2024
3. My role
Graphic designer
Project description
This project involved the creation of both a band logo for a band called “Dazzleship”, as well as an album cover for their first album, entitled “All the way home”.
The album cover was designed using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
The individual stages of the design process are described in detail below.
Illustrator
As I wanted to design the band logo first, Illustrator was my first port of call. My aim was to represent the name of the band in pictorial form using a compound shape. The shape needed to be instantly recognisable and memorable, while also conveying a classic rock feel. I designed the logo as an amalgamation of a pair of sails (to represent the “ship” part of the name) and a half sun (to represent the “dazzle” part of the name).
The font I used for the actual text part of the band logo was chosen as I felt that it had a very classic rock feel, along the lines of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
Photoshop
The next step in the design process was to create images for the front and back of the album cover. Based on the name of the album that was specified in the brief (“All the way home”), I felt there was scope for creativity, so I wanted to design an image that was familiar, yet mysterious – something that, upon closer inspection of the image, would cause the viewer to pause and think.
Having seen an abandoned house on a walk, I was intrigued by its story and felt it would make a great subject for a picture. I subsequently photographed this house and then edited the image to remove the sky and replace it with a combination of other images including the earth, the Milky Way, and a preset sky. The fact the earth can be seen above the house should lead the viewer to the conclusion that this abandoned house is, in fact, on another planet. It should beg the question as to why the house was abandoned and why it is not located on earth in the first place. I felt that this would lead the viewer to consider the concept of “home”, both in terms of the buildings where we grow up, and in terms of the planet that houses all of human civilisation.
The shot on the back of the album is the back door of the same house. Again, I felt that the dilapidated state of the door would cause the viewers to wonder about what lies behind it and how long it had been since it was last opened. I superimposed the band’s logo onto the door to add to the mystery and the provide a subtle design element that is not necessarily obvious upon first glance.
In terms of the colouration of the images, I was again inspired by classic rock artwork that used very few colours to create a particular atmosphere or to highlight curious or mysterious images, such as Black Sabbath’s eponymous album, Led Zeppelin IV, or Donovan’s “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”.
InDesign
The final step in the design process was to combine the band logo, band name and photos in InDesign. To give the background a more interesting and slightly more “weathered” look, I added an image of crumpled paper below a layer of colour and then altered the opacity of the coloured layer to allow the texture of the paper to show through.
I wanted to draw the viewer’s gaze towards the pictures on both the front and back by adding an embossed effect to the picture to make it seem like the album cover was a photo frame. To enhance this effect, I added a border around the background layer and the photograph.
The colouration of the background was again inspired by Donovan, who uses a similar colour on his 1967 album “A Gift from a Flower to a Garden”.