Alphabet Arm Design News

David Lockwood’s new LP, titled “Lucky Me”, stirred up a lot of ideas about traditions based around luck. In the end, we came to the conclusion of using a lucky rabbit’s foot. It took Aaron on an adventure to actually find an actual rabbit’s foot. He got lucky while stumbling into a wig shop. Why a wig shop? Well, Newbury Comics didn’t have any, of course. We took the rabbit’s foot idea into our own hands by setting up our own photoshoot. We ended up photographing David holding the rabbit’s foot. The idea was to create a warm, emotive image that portrayed luck. We applied textures to make it look old and worn, giving the viewer the feeling of an antique photograph. The final cover has a rich, tactile quality of that relates directly to David’s music.

How do you present a new artist to the world without succumbing to the typical, silly headshot-on-the-cover of an album or EP? By making everyone (read: Artist, Management, Label, etc.) happy by fusing said artist or band into a slightly more engaging setting. Obviously we wish we could report that we had the budget + time to hire a muralist to paint Skyler’s new logo 15′ wide on a beatifuly weathered wall then call on savvy, local photographer, Tony Luong, to capture it all. Not the case my friends, this cover became a labor of love in Photoshop. Peep the details.

It may seem like we missed Blog Day Wednesday®, but it only seems that way. You see, we’re just so crazy busy, that we’re operating on our own time-line. One of the projects that’s keeping us moving is the debut EP from The New Collisions, titled “Invisible Embraces.” They’re based out of Boston, but poised to break out in a big way, if a recent tour opening for Blondie and The B-52’s is any indication. They have an extremely well refined New Wave sound, and it was a lot of fun to work on a project with a bit of a different aesthetic. It also helped to have fantastic photography to work with from studio favorite Liz Linder.

We’re currently wrapping up the art direction for the packaging of the new album by WPA. The band came to us with the idea of referencing vintage posters of the Works Progress Administration of the late 1930’s as a concept for the cover. So far it has been good fun to research and draw inspiration directly from such well done historical designs. And of course, we always relish the chance to add some vintage paper and distress the art in order to add to the authenticity. WPA consists of Glen Phillips (Toad The Wet Sprocket), Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek), And Luke Bulla (Lyle Lovett) along with Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), Greg Leisz (Joni Mitchell, Bill Frisell), Benmont Tench (Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers), Pete Thomas And Davey Faragher (Elvis Costello And The Imposters). Check out the freshly approved cover.

We just wrapped up the art direction for G&F Records‘ newest project titled, “Our Musical Journey.” We decided to take a semi-literal approach to the “journey” theme starting with a beat-up, vintage suitcase. Using the track titles as inspiration we designed some travel-inspired tickets and stickers to decorate the suitcase and use throughout the packaging. If you didn’t notice, we also designed their logo several years ago.

We’ve spent the last few months designing two EPs and the full length release for Will Dailey (CBS Records). Will is an impressive, award-winning Boston singer/songwriter. He was joined by some very high-profile musicians during the recording of Torrents 1 & 2, including Roger McGuinn, Kay Hanley, Tanya Donelly, Elliott Easton, Tim Brennan and Duke Levine. One of the coolest aspects of the release is that they are presented in CODE, a high-resolution audio standard pioneered by T Bone Burnett.

It was rather liberating for us to develop a specific visual vibe for each release while retaining a continuety throughout all three. We were also fortunate enough to work with the ever talented photographer Liz Linder who supplied us with great visuals to work with.

After having worked with Sarah on her previous release, Diamonds in the Dark, we discovered we work very well together. It’s always quite liberating to have a client really trust your judgement and reasoning for specific design choices. When we began working on concepts for, The Stars Are Out, we decided to take a relatively literal approach to this record allowing the logo to live on the cover but in more of a constellation inspired form. Lacking a great image to use as a base, we stepped out the studio’s back door and took a quick shot of the neighboring buildings for comp purposes. Sarah ended up loving the tone of the photograph and felt it complimented the sound of the record perfectly. We ended up shooting quite a few more images of our neighborhood for the interior booklet after hearing Sarah’s enthusiastic response. Sarah had a number of paintings we integrated into the packaging as well, all in all it was quite a team effort (you’ll have to buy a copy of the record yourself when it’s released on March 24th).

In the meantime you can check out their badass new video here [Do It For Free].

We just finished up this digipak design for Scotty Don’t, a band out of Providence, RI. Don’t tell anyone, but the guys in Scotty Don’t are members of the well-known, Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime. We had a lot of fun working on this project—collaging photos and hand-drawing type.

We are, and have to say we’re pretty stoked to work up the art direction for this Letters to Cleo b-sides collection to compliment their reunion tour. The Cleos and the extended band family have always been a very loyal lot, we couldn’t be more appreciative. We were given the very daunting task of pulling this artwork together within a weeks notice. Lots of scanning, hand writing, weathering, image chopping and duct taping was necessary. Full props must go to USA Michael Eisenstein for the initial concept which honors the rough and ready, cut and paste, design aesthetic of the 1990’s indie rock packaging. We had the luxury of using a bunch really great photos taken by Steve Latham. If you don’t know him – you should!

Sometimes, it’s the simple idea that makes the cut. That was the case with our design for the latest release from Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives. Without much more than the album title to work with, we pitched this concept to them which utilized our own photography and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. Fortunately for us, the guys in the band can take a joke, and the theme was continued throughout the entire package. We’ll do a full reveal once we have the CD in hand, but in the meantime, we’d also like to draw your attention to the “Zero Down Entertainment” logo that we also designed for the record label.