Once again I have had the pleasure and privilege of designing a poster for the annual Joni Mitchell Tribute Concert, a benefit for the Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA) scholarship program, in Ithaca NY. As a Joni fan, songwriter and musician myself, this is a distinct pleasure.
Thanks to CSMA Board member Joe Gaylord, who works tirelessly to organize and promote the event. He is also a songwriter, musician and good friend.
Several months in the making, singer-songwriter Jennifer Haase’s long-awaited CD is now out. I found an amazing photo of antique Edwardian doll’s heads at the Flikr photostream for alliesadornments.com. We were given permission to use this photo, which is so perfectly in keeping with the thread that runs through Jennifer’s songs, and a little creepy! Subtle enhancements in Photoshop included desaturating slightly and adding a gradient shadow at the top of the photo. The entire design — colors, type, etc — followed from there.
But there were some challenges for me. Jennifer said she wanted RED and a vibe that was sexy and sly, and no photos or images of herself. But the biggest challenge was to include a lot of text thanking her many album investors. I even created a short video for Jennifer to give her an idea of how the layout would look.
After a few false starts, we hit on the right packaging design and overall concept that led to this classy album with its arresting cover. Rosanne Cash, who sings with Jennifer on one of the songs, reminded us about its similarity to the infamous Beatles’ cover that never was, with the Fab Four holding creepy dolls (‘Yesterday and Today’ — go on, google it!).
Font: Despieneda (MyFonts) Template: modified 6-panel “Jewel Free” with a clear hinged tray from OasisCD.com. Layout: InDesign Photo effects: Photoshop
It’s a great joy to combine my passions for graphic design and music in poster design.
I have been a devotee of Mitchell’s songs and guitar playing for almost 40 years. A few years ago I started a tradition of “Only Joni” open mics featuring local musicians performing Joni Mitchell songs. They were the outgrowth of a fun set I performed at the 2002 Ithaca Festival , complete with long blond wig.
“Jennifer Haase is a unique and gifted songwriter with the voice of an angel. I highly recommend her.” –Rosanne Cash
I’m excited to begin working on the new CD for my friend Jennifer Haase.
Jennifer is an amazing, subtle songwriter with a coy, charming voice much like Alison Krause, but this sweetheart can deliver a cutting comment or two and before you know it you realize you are dealing with a formidable observer and storyteller. We met at Rosanne Cash’s songwriting workshops.
By sheer dint of optimism, Jennifer has raised more than $10k to fund her second album project. I’ll be donating some of my time and a discount to help her make it happen. ”No More Invitations” will arrive in 2011. The 1st single NEW PINK SWEATER is available for download now at www.cdbaby.com/cd/jenniferhaase or your favorite music e-tailer.
Cross pollination is inevitable with repeat clients.
Enjoyable, too. In this case, really something to celebrate as Paper Kisses (Tom Mank and Sera Smolen) and Xerox The Clouds (Susan Hoover and Sera Smolen) were debuted on the same day, at Tom’s birthday party in Ithaca.
There is always a chance the printing can go terribly wrong so I was very pleased and relieved to see the results. Two very fine products looking exactly as hoped for.
Paper Kisses was manufactured by oasiscd.com and Xerox The Clouds was made by mixonic.com.
The finished CDs came out looking exactly as hoped for. Everybody happy!
If you’ve been longing to start your own blog but don’t know where to begin, I can help!
My friend TMann writes about recovery, sports, and American culture. He is also a house painting contractor here in Ithaca, NY.
While painting a room in my house, TMann confessed he had been thinking about creating a blog but had no idea where to begin. So we met at my computer and within an hour we had published an About page and his first post for thesoberguy.wordpress.com.
thesoberguy "About" page
I chose Blix for the theme and photographed TMann’s portrait for the “About” page. TMann sends me his posts as Word files attached to an email. I do a quick spell and format check and paste it into a new post. Our basic categories are “Sports” Sobriety, “Living Sober,” etc.
Careful tagging is the key to bumping TMann’s posts in wordpress serches. For instance, search for sobriety and food at wordpress and TMann’s post For Drunkards, Food Is Secondary tops the list of related posts.
Proofs from the layouts are fine but it helps some clients to see digital mock-ups of the finished CD packaging. I create Perspective Mock-ups in Photoshop.
First, I open the layout and grab screenshots of the front cover, back cover, and insert sides, then open these in Photoshop. Next I duplicate these on new layers of a photo of the jewel case, disc, traycard and insert, which I’ve also opened in Photoshop. Then, using Edit –> Transform –> Distort, I layer and fit the screenshots of the cover, back and inserts over the photo. I mask areas and add drop shadow to create depth. After flattening the layers I save the composite as a pdf, and I’ve got a very accurate representation of the finished product, that can be emailed to the client.
Paper Kisses is the forthcoming CD from Tom Mank & Sera Smolen, produced by Julie Last. Tom and Sera are not only music colleagues and clients but also good friends. This is the 4th project we have worked on together. Sera and poet Susan Hoover hired me to design their forthcoming CD, Xerox The Clouds (see the post).
Tom and Sera chose the “Green” 6-panel Wallet package from Oasiscd.com. I like this package — no plastic. The CD slips into a die cut sleeve instead of sitting in a plastic tray. I have designed many CDs with Oasis templates. What a great company! The have lots of choices and layout templates come in various formats. I am using the InDesign format. The cover and fountain pen images were sourced from Shutterstock, an economical and easy to use stock photo and image site.
The stock images and photos are first adjusted and prepped in Photoshop then placed in the IDD layout as CMYK jpgs. The text is in Calibri font, except the back panel and spine, which are good old Courier. I used the calligraphic style ChatoBand for the title and monospaced, typewriter style Courier as a complement to it, in keeping with the title song about love letters. I like to get my fonts from MyFonts.com.
I am making pdf proofs to show the client. IDD makes it easy to export the file to pdf format.
This is a fun project and it’s going quickly. What a pleasure to work with such great clients!
Blogs are often the perfect substitute for a top-heavy website, and
Green is the new black!
Ceci (who happens to be my sister) is launching a new venture — literally — a travel blog with “the planet and pennies in mind.” She asked me to help her set it up, design a custom header and upload her content. I designed the custom header using royalty-free graphics found through google image searches. I also wrote the text for the About page.
Click on the image below to visit her blog.
"Sea Green and Go" Custom Header
We plan on collaborating as she adds content. It’s a real treat to work with my sister!
