Head to Head

Description

Noah’s an uh-mazing trumpet player and composer from the East Coast. We know each other through the dance community and one day he hit me up on Facebook to see if I’d do up a nice album design for his album of original swing tunes. 

Client: Noah Hocker

Tools: Photoshop

Kicking Things Off

Here you’ll see some doodling as well as a few inspirational images of Mike Mignola’s work – I love the shapely and weighty feel of his work and how he reduces so much information to just what’s necessary.

Research & Inspiration

Pretty quickly I came up with this version of the cover for which I did a couple color variations. I must have been thumbing through some Sergio Toppi on Pinterest cause the influence is definitely there.

The Portrait Process

It was important to Noah that all of the band members be depicted in some way. With him *owning* the cover like the badass he is, that left the inside for the rest o’ the crew. Along with the cover ideas I sent him a test portrait of the guitar player, Brennan, looking like Superman (you’re welcome, Brennan!) to show him what I was thinking for the portraits. 

Ideating on Portraits the Whole Band

The colorful space helmet portraits were interesting to me but didn’t fit with the established look of the cover. There was also something a little Brady Bunch about them.

Narrowing the Focus

Here are some variations I came up with that were more in line with the cover.

Designing for Multiple Languages

New to me was working with the Chinese language. It took a little extra research to find a “hip” Chinese font pairing. The album was released in China first, and Noah spends a lot of time there, hence the bilingual titles.

Creating a Cohesive Design

Here you’ll see I’m just getting everything in view to make sure all of the panels play well together…”no fighting!”

Wrapping Things Up

Lastly, all of the finished panels on their own.