WMC celebrates the creative space where visual art and music intersects. We can’t attend WMC Fest this year, so we invited Dribbbling WMCFesters Finley, Brandon Rike, Caroline Moore and Jon Contino to discuss employing a visual medium to express an audible art. If you missed past posts, click and read about WMC Fest, Jeff Finley’s work for his band Campfire Conspiracy, and Brandon Rike’s work for folk rockers Mumford & Sons.
Designer • Editorial Photographer • Lifestyle Photographer • Videographer • Violinist with the Washington (Penn.) Symphony Orchestra • @mooreclick on Twitter
I follow Michael [Aaron Keith], from Petticoat Lane, on Twitter. He’s got a few bands going, but this so far has kind of been a solo effort for him. So when he said he was looking for someone to do album art for him, I said, “Oh, I do that.” We talked back and forth a bit, and I sent him my portfolio. He said, “You’re the lady that did the Green Day shirt!” He really liked the illustration style, and wanted to go for something similar to that.
The title of the EP is The Table Turned, and the rest of the line in the song that comes from is “and poison came ‘round.” Michael had given me a few visuals he’d been considering. I sketched up a few different things, and we were both pretty into the idea of this guy staring down a bottle.
Working with a smaller band like his, there’s an opportunity for a lot of back and forth. I’m not going through a management company, I’m just talking to a guy in the band. So I’d text him sketches, I’d email him the outline version, so he was pretty involved in the whole process, and got to see different stages of it.
I’m big on research for any project that I do, so music’s not really different for me. If I’m designing for a band, I’m listening to their music a lot. I read lyrics, I look at what other graphics they have out there, how they like to present themselves. I do find that they’re a lot more open to nonsense than most clients, which is a lot of fun.
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