Album Covers (1/3)

These are Jack's covers in chronological order. He's always had an interest in producing music and so I thought to look at his older products in order to help influence my decisions and designs for the Weird Sky album. Jack originally worked under his real name but has since decided to name his solo project Elsewhere Head. Below I will also be discussing some work he has done on Bandcamp with his other bands "The Complete Series" and "Surf City".

Jack’s album covers from Eughan Wooding

The Mechanics of Parody
Jack's very first album from Year 7, it is kind of a mess in terms of the composition and in fact the font choice was very basic and doesn't stand out - the colours likely needing an outline over the photograph used for the front cover. The fonts are extremely chunky and it is difficult to read the track list as they're not spaced out. One thing to note perhaps is how he is rather consistent in having his name after the title of the album, which I will likely keep in the new design. I also like the use of the yellow text in the sky, the yellow contrasts well with the blue. I have said it is hard to read but I think yellow text will be really eye-catching if given an outline too.

Redone Radians
This album cover was designed by a mutual friend of me and Jack, his name is Andrew. He is interested in graphic design and so Jack sought him out for help making the cover. What was done is rather basic but keeps a consistent palette and the cell shading is quite distinct too. The composition is great with the title and artist name being clear and central, however I think that for this more psychedelic album the text should be hand-drawn - this would allow me to have some more control over what the text will look like. In fact, I will likely use the same font I drew for the music video title as to maintain come iconography.

Generic Blues
This cover is a mess, it was created by Oskar who is the latter half of the Complete Series. The cutting on the individual images is really prominent and there is perhaps too much on the cover for it to really be appealing; notably the text's font clashes with the background and is difficult to read as a result - albeit the font chosen is also rather difficult to read anyway. Overall there isn't much to discern from this album cover.

The Attic
Again, this particular cover is quite amateur. I don't believe the composition is very well thought out and there is a distinct lack of colour due to it being drawn with a biro. This is likely due to it being a last minute album and the cover is therefore also impromptu; notably it is titled the Attic but the cover says Attic Deep just to add to the poor planning implication. There is very little I could or would want to apply to the final album from this design.

Surf Girl
The photoshop work on this album is pretty good, it manages to make the unnatural colouring of the water at the seaside in the image blend in naturally. It subverts the realistic expectations for the image by adding in some rather surreal water to contrast to the otherwise untouched parts of the image. The one issue I found was the text which appears to be quite unclear and pixelled; the writing is done with a thin brush and therefore the lines are very clear. In fact, despite having such a vibrant choice of text colouring it is difficult to see the writing as the text was made quite small. I suppose the size of the text is something to better consider.

Shit Music
I will release a separate post about this design.

Mystic Optician
Some of Jack's original artwork, the text is much clearer than that of the Attic but again still looks unprofessional. There is not much cohesion to the cover and it is rather unappealing overall. I would include Jack's face on the album  but feel the sky imagery should be more prominent than Jack's face. One thing to note actually is how the central eye within the mouth seems to have some lines coming out, this perhaps relates back to the line "You make my third eye bleed" from Mystic Optician, which I could perhaps include in my final design as this track will be included on the final album.

I Love My Hate
The image is minimalist in some respects just like the Pink Floyd work I looked at before, however there is no text to help inspire my design. I think that the inclusion of text is needed and actually I would like to include more colour than the design shows; I would note that as an inside cover, this style might look great if the inner sleeves were perhaps semi circles which joined in the center of the album.

Weird Sky
This is a proto cover that Jack included as he wished to release his album earlier, other than that there is not much else to say since Jack decided he would later use my own album cover once it was made.