Album Design

[Drewbacca]

Over the last few months I was doing an internship downtown (Toronto) at an animation boutique, which is a fancy name for animation house. They specialized in broadcast and commercial design, designing commercials, presentations (founders day at coke), TV spots, and characters for broadcast (among other stuff) for some big name clients. (Leo and Barnett, Coke, Keloggs, Spike TV, Royal Bank, The Fuse Network, etc.) My time spent at this company was priceless, as I earned some good friends (and good people, which is hard to find) in the design community around Toronto who can and are willing to teach me a lot.

For two or three days of placement they asked me to produce an album (CD case) for a hip hop group they knew called The Killaz. The Killaz used to be known as The G.I. Joe Killaz before they changed their name. Anyway, I designed an album cover for them and pretty soon it's going to be available in stores all over the U.S., Canada, Japan and Europe. This project of mine has put me in the position of being hired on full-time at this super successful (and small, 3 guys) design house and given me something to put in my portfolio.

Here it is:



This isn't the FINAL one being printed, but it's close. The main cover's subtitle has been changed to all black (I ORIGINALLY had it black but the client wanted some colour in there, so I comprimised with the green) and the spine's typography has changed entirely to black.

www.thekillaz.net is their website (it has the final album design up on the site)

I think this is the first design I've ever posted on TNL. It's a really different style than I usually do but it turned out really well and I'm proud of it. The album is launching this week. I wasn't allowed to post it before it launched (honor system too, my bosses don't believe in nondisclosure contracts or releases).

[rezo]

Looks pretty awesome.

You posted a design here before though... some cinnamon bun place's logo, or something.

[Drewbacca]

Oh yeah. I liked that logo but I just used it for school. My teachers said I should pitch the line of bakeries to a company like TwinCorp or Pepsi to compete with Cinnabun. Hopefully the attachment doesn't go crazy (although I'm not expecting a lot of comments).

It's in my portfolio now too.

[arjue]

That's really great.

What font is that? I've been looking for a nice calligraphy font for a while now.

[Drewbacca]

I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm designing business cards later today so I'll check out the name of the font then and post it. If you have MSN or something like that I may be able to send it to you.

I design on a Mac though, so I'm not sure if the font will transfer. I know of another scripty font that's good on dafont. It's called Marcell so check that out too.

[Kidnemo]

Looks good Andrew.

[FirstBlood]

Looks pretty good. Not a fan of the photos and especially the gray type to the right of them.

but the nouveau logo is really nice.

[Drewbacca]

The pictures are more colourized and less monocromatic (unless you meant the actual photographs, which I had nothing to do with). The grey type was reduced significantly in size for the final but it's still there.

I think i'm just going to post the final copy later today.

[FirstBlood]

Colorizing the photos should help, but I still think they seem a little out of place and I don't really like the three-bar setup they've got going. And yeah the gray type would definitely be better if scaled down (it's probably a bit too bold).

But otherwise very nicely done. I espcially like the subtle blue in the cover tank.

[Drewbacca]

Arjue: I didn't find the exact font, but a font named Snell is another great script font for you to use if you can get your hands on it.