“RETURN” ALBUM COVER
Single Album Cover Design
TIMELINE
Aug - Oct 2025
(2 months)
ROLE
Illustrator, Graphic Designer
TOOLS
Illustrator, Illustration
IDEATION
Brainstorming
My client had a vision of how he wanted his album to look, and provided his mood board and thumbnail of his character.
He envisioned the album having minimal linework style using grayscale, spiral elements, and a focus on a wizard-like character.
My mood board
I took his vision and ideas, and interpreted his original themes of solitude and wonder by collecting visuals that represent the mysteriousness, vastness, and loneliness of outer space.
Sketching
I provided three different iterations to get a sense of the composition. My priority was making the spirals carry the focus of the wizard character.
DESIGN PROCESS
Style Experimentation
After finalizing the character design, I used Illustrator to work on the foreground and background assets. My next phase was to decide on how to express the style of the spiral elements. In my five iterations, I used different brushes and tools to execute unique styles that would still flow with the minimalism.
The client really enjoyed the look of Draft #2, in which the spirals are bolder and closer in proximity to the character.
Finalizing Typography
At first, I used capitalized letters to spell out the title of the song, but decided to go with lower cased spelling to stay within the flow of the initial round, simplistic design style. I hid part of the title behind the unknown round planet in the background to create an illusion of subtlety.
Final Design
I quite like how the final design came out, and happy we were able to make the minimalism work with a more complex background by combining the different use of textures, gradients, and coloring styles.
Featured on Spotify
TAKEAWAY
This was my first project in working with a music-oriented subject, and thought it was super fun and refreshing.
Improvements for next time:
My client had a specific concept, which made the creative process easier to handle. My difficulties were mainly constrained with my technical abilities to execute certain effects on the program, which I ended up learning as I continued to experiment on those style choices. Next time, I would like to thoroughly plan out different graphic ideas using new styles to expand my process a bit more.