Project Objective
Over the past three months, I set out to push myself creatively through a personal project unlike anything I had ever done. I wanted to use the beginner skills that I had from Adobe Illustrator to create a cohesive single project composed of several different elements. Up until now, I had only completed one-off projects that did not need to go with one another.
This daunting task required a great deal of planning, sketching, and seeking feedback, as I pushed myself to a single project with multiple cohesive deliverables. I immediately sought out a trusted mentor who would regularly check my progress and give me tips on how to create a more professional final piece.
Project Process
With the goal of creating a single, large project with several deliverables, I started brainstorming and sketching. I was inspired by the records sitting in my own home and the detailed work that goes into designing something that represents an entire collection of songs. I was quickly invigorated by this concept and started sketching a fictional music album.
While sketching in my own notebook to imagine what the album cover could look like, I envisioned a teenager in high school scribbling everything they think in the margins of a piece of paper. I remembered how students at my school growing up would buy all white tennis shoes just to scribble on them. I suddenly had a clear vision of a hodgepodge of ideas, almost like a word-vomit of an album. There would be no editing. Once it’s written on the page, there’s no taking it back. That was the album.
As part of the development stage, I had to nail exactly who would be listening to this fictional album. I first started with a very broad idea of a 15 year old female high schooler, but I quickly remembered that just with most artists, the music would not be everyone’s cup of tea.
She transformed into a specific person with individual likes and dislikes, favorite clothing brands, favorite movies, a family, and more. Seeing my angsty teen in action, even if just in my head, allowed me to get even more precise with my designs, and especially later on when deciding what hand sketches to include in my project.
At every stage, I met with my mentor to receive detailed, specific feedback on my developing ideas. I received extremely specific feedback, such as how to shape a specific notebook sticker, as well as more vague but still helpful tips, such as “It’s just not quite there yet. Try sketching this out again before going to design in Illustrator.”
In my initial Illustrator designs, I had “drawn” sketches as if inside a notebook using a tool in Illustrator. The faux sketches were very clearly computer-made and not hand-drawn as I had hoped. One of the tips I received was to consider actually drawing by hand and scanning in my sketches. With that idea bright in my mind, I spent at least a week drawing anything and everything my fictional teenager wouldn’t consider absolutely obnoxious.
One of my very first designs for the album cover was in the right direction, but not exactly perfect. It felt too safe, too planned, too guarded. The people listening to this album needed to feel reckless and free when seeing the front cover, or else they would never push play on this record. The photos below demonstrate the journey I went on to perfect this design.
One of the ways I achieved this feeling of freedom was with a very intentionally obnoxious color palette. Normally, I would go for less saturated tones so that they are gentler on the eyes. For this project, I had the saturation at 100% for all of the 6 main colors. The only muted tones were actually the white and black tones to contrast the attention-grabbing neon tones.
The stickers also went on a large journey. I played it far too safe in initial designs where stickers were evenly spaced and balanced. Unfortunately, this simply was not the space for balance. This project was my opportunity to play with overwhelming activity all at once and try to find a way to make it not absolutely atrocious to the eye.
As a bonus challenge, I even went so far as to design a merch hoodie that could be sold in conjunction with this album rollout. While this is the only piece that I prepared a mockup for, I had at least 50 feasible ideas for merchandising that I could easily see a teenager buying to support their favorite band. These ideas included matchboxes, water bottles, mints, and speakers.
Final Deliverables
After months of tweaking my designs and then seeking feedback from a professional, I finally came to a point where I was truly happy with the ultimate product. This design accomplishes exactly what I sought to do, which is have several different designs to come together and form one solid, cohesive story.
The story told by this project is that teenagers feel emotions extremely hard. Yes, everything really is that serious for them. That is something that should be celebrated, because the alternative is becoming numb. Let’s celebrate the little victories by putting some records on that make us feel understood for once.