Client Overview
AWNING is a New York-based electronic folk duo comprised of Luke Smith and Jon Sheldrick, two of my long-time friends and collaborators. I love working with them because each of the projects starts with a set of guidelines and constraints, and for me, that really fosters creativity.
The artwork for each of their releases was designed using a process that mirrored the way the music was composed and recorded – AWNING often blends a mix of digital, synthesized sounds, and sounds that are recorded live (vocals or acoustic guitar, for instance) and then chopped up, layered, and effected. So when it comes to the design process, we might we start with a single image (or many source images) and cut it up, reverse it, repeat it, colorize it and put it back together. It's meant to be composed in the same way AWNING records a single vocal line or drum track and cuts it up, reverses it, repeats it, effects it, and puts it back together.
I'll often listen to the album over and over as I'm designing, trying to examine and internalize the subtleties of their work and translating into mine. I'll sit and hone in on the use of sonic color, transparency, repetition, glitching, ambiance, and texture of the tracks.
It's truly inspiring to transpose a creative process from one medium to another.
February 2014
- Industry
- Services
TWO AGAINST ME
2014
It was super fun to design a vinyl sleeve for the first time. In addition to the work I've done with Jon and Luke in the past, I've designed a dozen or more album covers, sleeves, layout, inserts, etc., but only for CD and digital releases, never for the scale of a vinyl sleeve. The depth, richness and resolution that you can get out of a 12" cover really opens up a lot of composition questions I hadn't had the space to think about before. I don't know if I can ever go back...
The basis for this design was similar to the other work with AWNING in that there was an analog capture phase and then a post-production phase. A water tank was setup with transparent photos suspended inside, then ink was shot into the tank while a high speed camera snapped photos. The resulting imagery was beautiful, surreal and other-worldly, and it gave me a massive set of assets to play around with.
EP (2)
2011
This project started with a single image of fireworks. We went through a number of variations on the colorization, font treatment, and layout, ultimately settling on this outcome.
EP (1)
2011
For the first release we chose a closeup photo of a knob on a piece of audio equipment, which I then digitally effected, colorized, and digitally painted on. I also created the lettering that has continued to show up in AWNING artwork.
