Alphabet Arm Design News

Richard Shindell is an expatriate New Yorker currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Richard is a craftsman of folk songs that are often laden with rich storytelling. Thirteen Songs You May or May Not Have Heard Before is “a relatively spare, no-frills revisit of some of the songs from his catalogue.” To compliment his rustic sound, we designed his upcoming CD package with a hands-on approach. We stamped each letter of the title by hand and made sure to retain the beautifully imperfect character of the type. An archival scan of wood type (which had definitely seen better days) was incorporated to reinforce the unrefined quality of the cover. Props to Richard for embracing the stark, bold, type-only design that we think is quite eye-catching.

Kairos, translated in Spanish, means opportune time. Apparently, it was the opportune time for this recording project rooted in R&B, positivity, pop and the band member’s faith. Alphabet Arm was hired to art direct their debut release, Corro A Ti. We augmented their travel-themed photos and developed a textured, bold layout to compliment their music and its complex influences.

Actually, Ollie Childs is not American at all, the singer / songwriter was born in England, but he has written a stellar track celebrating the states. Non-Drip Gloss Records was savvy enough to coincide its release with Independence Day. Here is the cover for the single (available on iTunes):

Being a studio with an extensive record collection of our own, we are never satisfied to stick with the expected singer / songwriter “glamour shot” album motif. Much credit goes to Ollie and his management to allow us much visual leeway. In this instance, we also didn’t want to be overly nationalistic, but liked the idea of introducing something as iconic as the American flag into the layout. We used a great deal of layered Photoshop images and textures (close to 30) to achieve the final cover treatment. We were greatly inspired by the depth, tone and lyrical content of Ollie’s songs. Here are a couple detailed views to wave your flag to:

April Verch and her band play an energetic style of blue grass, blues  and pop (among other styles) deeply rooted in the Ottawa Valley musical tradition. Not only is April an highly accomplished fiddler, singer and songwriter, but she’s also a pretty amazing step dancer. Seriously, she’s s super talented. Recently, we finished up the design for April’s forthcoming CD. From a design standpoint, April basically asked us to do what we do. In this case, that included hand drawn typography and rustic canvas texture.

Adam Levy is a singer-songwriter and guitar player residing in New York. We recently finalized the art direction and design for his latest solo album, The Heart Collector. Adam pretty much left the door wide open for our creative interpretation on his record. We used the lyrics and dark mood of the title track for inspiration which was full of interesting descriptions and metaphors — perfect for creating visuals. Vintage anatomy text books quickly became the device we used to structure a diverse sampling of textures and imagery we associated with the themes of The Heart Collector. Look close and you can even see how we were able to tuck some of Adam’s lyrics and a map of his NYC stomping grounds cover collage itself.

Have we mentioned – as a studio – how much we enjoy the process of developing the visual counterpart to music? Well, we do. It’s even more liberating when a client trusts us to do so. Thus was the case with Jason Young and his recording project, heartour. We’ve worked with Jason and his previous band, The Ruse, as well as his debut release of heartour. Part of the reason he has faith in us, is our constant effort to make his albums look as interesting as it sounds. We couldn’t help but be inspired by the album title, Submarine Sounds, and layers of sonic treats he folds into his songs. Adding levels of imagery, both overt and abstract, seems to gives the final package the depth we were hoping to achieve. The type treatment we developed for the cover now serves as the new identity for the project. Dive! Dive!

If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you may have read an entry or two about our old friend Kay Hanley. In fact, we’ve been art directing/designing albums together since 1997. Her latest project, Palmdale is a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/producer, Linus Of Hollywood. It’s a tour de force of rockin’ pop hooks. How to Be Mean is their second EP. After talking to the band and hearing the rough tracks from the EP, we opted to take a literal approach to the cover and digital booklet. Palmdale is actually named for a city in southern California. Palmdale sounds picturesque, lush and pristine — over time, it may have fallen short of the promise the romantic name portrays. Kay and Linus felt the music should complement both sides of that coin. This photo was taken in California a dozen years ago and seemed like the perfect starting point for the cover. We labored over distressing the image and type and added a warm color palette to mimic the intense heat in the vast concrete landscapes of SoCal.

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.