When a design brief pings up on WhatsApp from MC Serch a little before midnight asking you to create the cover

art for his first single in over twenty five years, you put aside the UK/US time differences and get straight to work!

Serch had a very clear vision of how he wanted the design to look so back-and-forthing concepts on this occasion was unnecessary.

 

The first step was to source as many reference images of The Marcy Houses and Redfern Houses signs. Over the years both housing projects have had numerous variations of their respective signage, so it was important to find the era and stvle that Serch had envisioned.

 

 

After consulting with Serch, an agreement was ascertained on which of the signs matched his vision. The Marcy Houses project sign has probably seen the most variation in design over the years. The years when Serch would hang around on those blocks the sign was what Serch referred to as Mets colours, orange and blue. It was this colourway that would need to be incorporated into the design.

 

 

I made some vector assets of the different styles of projects signs as Serch had mentioned that he liked the style of a few others and would like to have a few options presented. He’d considered a few variations but stuck with his initial two options.

 

 

The next stage was to overlay the vector assets onto existing pictures of both the Redfern and Marcy Houses signs. The images were then aged, weathered and filtered as there aren’t any hi-res shots from the era. This aesthetic was something that Serch was pleased that I’d taken the initiative on as he thought it was evocative of a hazy nostalgia. The single is an affirmation of the hood he grew up in, the imagery, he felt, conveyed that.

 

 

Of the final two submissions, Serch couldn’t quite decide. The obvious compromise was to overlay the Mets coloured Marcy sign onto the Redfern sign to see if that would inform a more definitive decision? This direction was approved straight away and was signed off by Serch’s label.

 

 

Although the single was only released digitally, Serch requested that I mock up a vinyl version for the label to consider at a later date. The single is Far Rockaway centric. To reflect this I designed the centre label with the ‘A’ from the ‘A train’ which is the line that serves the entirety of Far Rockaway. The fact that it was also the A-side of the record was also an added bonus. Both Serch and the label were very happy with the concept.