Anxiety - Album Cover
Objective
To design a vinyl-sized album cover for an album of my choosing while utilizing photography and typography to establish the feel of the record in a captivating way. I opted to create an album for a song I wrote and designed the record as if it were released as a single.
Concept
When starting this project I already had an idea for what I wanted to create. The song I wrote is called Anxiety, and for me, anxiety can feel like a monster inside that is taking control. For the front cover, I wanted to take a picture of a girl in front of a mirror and have a monster showing in the reflection, to represent the monster inside. The idea for the back cover was a close-up of the girl’s face with the monster’s hand over it to continue the symbolization of control, and to represent how anxiety can make it hard to speak or even breathe. I later decided to add the monster’s face on the back cover to reinforce the idea of its control.
Photographic Process
For the front cover, I set up a tripod in my bathroom and took two photos. One photo was of me standing in front of the mirror and the other was the same scene, excluding me. This was so I could easily remove myself from the reflection in the mirror if needed. For the back cover, I set up the tripod in front of a black background and sat in front of it to take a close-up photo of my face. I took all my photos at night so I could completely control the lighting and avoid unwanted light from windows.
Colors
I chose to make this album entirely monochromatic grayscale. I knew I wanted the monster to be a dark figure and I felt that it would be much more impactful if there was no color on the album.
Final Process
To create the monsters I worked with my significant other who paints and sculpts monsters, since making monsters is not my area of expertise. We worked together to create the type of monster that I was envisioning, and then I used Photoshop to add them in. For the monster’s hand on the back cover, he used his hand as a reference, since my hand would have been too small to create the effect I was looking for when I took the photo. I chose to add lots of shadows to the back of the album to create contrast between both sides and to add to the feeling of being overwhelmed and consumed by anxiety. After adding the monster elements and other editing I added the type. I chose a simple thin typeface to avoid competing with the imagery. I also wanted the type to represent how anxiety can make you feel fragile and stretched so thin you’re to the point of breaking. The front has the song title and my “stage name”, while the back has the lyrics since there is no side a or b.
