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"What Still Remains" EP Cover (left) and "Call Me Back" single cover (right).
These are my most recent album covers for the band, representing a more evolved stage in our music. Our themes in these projects had moved away from the space-focused nature of our previous album, instead being a lot more grounded on our experience with this planet. As a result, I wanted to focus on representing more naturalistic imagery with these, with a focus on the representation of instruments and music as a common theme, rather than space imagery.
Though these are completely different media, we wanted them to have correlating feels- as the single was released as a build up to the EP. This is why opted to include a white border and square layout, as well as a centrally-aligned and slightly left facing orientation for the imagery.
"Live from Mars" Album Cover
I wanted to create a cover that represented the energy and range of styles within the album, while also being relatively simple and attention grabbing. It seemed like a natural choice to go for imagery of Mars given that it is the name of the band, so from there I played with ways to make it more graphic and unique.
This presented a fun challenge to me of making a design that, despite being detailed and interesting up close, also had a strong composition. This was in order for it to work effectively at a smaller size, which is how most people would see it (ie. as an album cover on spotify).
"Don't Look Down" Single Cover
This project marks a huge milestone in my career, as it is not only my first design that will be published on Apple Music, Spotify, and other streaming services, but also my first music project to be released. Live From Mars is a Madison based jazz-inspired space rock band that I have been a part of for over a year, and have taken on as a project to create a visual identity for in order to push myself as a designer.
The song depicts a journey of flight, and of feeling the thrill of self discovery and development, all while urging the listener to not "look down," or second guess themselves. I wanted to evoke above all else a sense of acceleration and height, so I made the focal point of the cover a rocket accelerating into space.
I originally designed the basic shapes in watercolors in order to have a textured and abstract feel to the cover, which suits the band's looser improvisational style. I opted then to digitally enhance the painting to make it more recognizable, by adding small details such as a glow behind the smoke at the bottom and a more extended body for the rocket. Finally, I threw in some small details to make the cover feel complete, such as our logo behind the red dot representing Mars, and a space photo courtesy of Will Jarvis, our resident drummer and astrophysicist.
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