Vinyl Jacket: Common Street Cemetery, Install A Better One
This project focused on creating branding and graphics for a fictional band and their accompanying album. The band Common Street Cemetery falls under the indie-folk genre, so capturing the relationship between aesthetics and graphics within this musical style was essential to the final result. Since music can’t be seen, the goal was to create a visual experience that compliments the sound of Common Street Cemetery. This album jacket serves as a representation of their music, providing an expected visual motif to partner with their indie folk sound.
For this project, I wanted to push my technical abilities and skills within Photoshop. Prior to this project, I did not have much experience manipulating images, something I wanted to learn and apply throughout the creation process. I knew I wanted to do something different from my usual style, so I made sure to push myself toward unfamiliar places during the ideation phase.
Research
Unsure of where I wanted to take the project at first, I did research on album art that I found appealing. I also compiled images to reference and take inspiration from throughout my ideation and sketching stages. Due to this, the same imagery pops up throughout the project.
ideation
After randomly generating the name of the band and album I'd be working with, it was time to start sketching. I wasn't sure what genre Common Street Cemetery would fall under, so I went through a few different representations of genres before deciding on what concepts to pursue.
Post-Hardcore
Electronic Ambient
Instrumental (Top) / Space Rock (Bottom)
Indie-Folk
Sketching
After choosing the indie-folk direction, the next step was to develop the interior spread and back cover of the vinyl, along with refining the front cover. These sketches build upon the ideas and designs from the initial ideation phase, pushing them further to create visually compelling concepts that align with the band's aesthetic and genre. During this process, I made sure all aspects of the project were cohesive sharing the same visual language.
Front
Interior
Back
Final
After refining the sketching process, I arrived at the final jacket design. My Design effectively captures the essence of Common Street Cemetery while still being visually compelling. The indie-folk genre is still clearly represented, resulting in a balanced, cohesive, and unique album jacket.
Full Jacket
Full Jacket Enlarged
Mockups
