CASE STUDY #1
THE 6IX Album Designs
Leo Noirr, an up and coming hip-hop artist in the Toronto area, came to me with a request. He needed a design for his first album that would be eye-catching and portray himself looking out at the Toronto skyline. The cover was supposed to resemble an old-school PlayStation game case, which will be seen through the process, however, we were later made to remove the case due to copyright concerns.
Let me take you on a journey through this process…
Rough Sketches
The images below are the first concepts of the album that I presented to my client. I followed his guidelines for what should be in the image and made a variety of adjustments until he was happy with the final sketch (coloured).
The Process
These next photos are the progress pictures I sent to my client as the process continued. If I wanted to show or get approval for a specific aspect of the art, I would send a screenshot of the art.
Software used for the project include: Adobe Photoshop and Procreate
Showing off the basic skyline which was made using a reference image of the real Toronto skyline
base layer placed for composition purposes
Adding lights to the buildings to give the illusion of night (using the real skyline as reference)
More detail added to character, water, lights and railing
sky colour adjusted, beginning work on playstation sidebar
Font added to sidebar and “Explicit Content” Suggestion included on bottom right
Finishing touches/textures added to smoke, railing, character, sidebar, sky, moon
I made another version of the final artwork with an orange sky to give variety to leo’s choice in cover. (He could not decide if sky should be orange or purple, so I made this cover as a solution)
Back of Album
The back cover is essential to every music album. I wanted to make this part of the album just as eye catching as the front.
This process included handwriting the title of the songs in their designated spot on the cover, then choosing a suitable typeface to replace the handwriting. I chose to use a hallow font to compliment the airy/smokey nature of the hand-drawn numbers. A filter was added to the type and numbers to make them transparent so they could blend smoothly with the background.
The colours used are the same as the ones used for the sky on the front. The character in the middle was designed to be “floating’ in the light beam through the middle of the design.
LOGO
Leo decided that he wanted a logo to represent his brand “Noirr Collection”. This was to include the Jamaican flag to represent Leo’s cultural heritage and the CN tower to represent his Canadian culture.
I used simple geometric shapes to design this logo to make it easily and quickly recognizable. The only colour used would be the green and yellow on the flag, which is also recognizable and stands out against the tower.
Leo drew this image for inspiration
Concept Sketch
Illustrator (Vector) design
Completed Design
The Challenge
As mentioned above, we ran into copyright concerns with the original cover due to the Playstation imitation. This meant I had to remove that section of the art and rearrange some elements. This gave me a change to redo Leo’s name in smoke and brighten the colours so they were more vibrant.
I am overall satisfied with the final result of these fixes to the cover as I thought the Playstation vibe was not complementing the other visuals. I am also happy I could brighten the colours as it makes the artwork pop.