Santi C is a talented Boston-based singer-songwriter I had the pleasure to do some album artwork for. I worked with him to bring to life the vision he had for his album cover. I did not have much creative direction on this project but I injected my ideas where appropriate. Since the album was self titled he wanted an image of himself as the cover. He liked a lot of silhouette type album covers from classic soul artists so we went with this direction. I didn't want it to be a full silhouette so during the photo stage we worked at getting the right lightning that showed enough of his face and other details. The photo was looking a bit dramatic for his heart-felt and upbeat music so I suggested introducing a colorful gradient in the background to inject some joy and energy. I think the final design is a striking and recognizable cover that reads well at all sizes. In addition to the album cover I also designed a CD case and vinyl record. I incorporated the gradient elements from the cover design in order to connect all of the media. He provided me with some images he wanted to use on the CD and the vinyl. I put this in black and white in order to not introduce too many other colors. My two favorite parts of the design are his signature we put in the gradient as well as the CD that uses the negative space of the hole as an "o". I learned a lot from this project. I hadn't done much in physical media before, so I learned about getting the right file types and sizes as well as using templates provided from printers. Another thing I learned from this project was how to work collaboratively. Although this project was not really done in my style I was able to work together with Santi to create something we were both happy with. This required good communication to make sure no one was on the wrong page.
