Redesign the cover of an existing album in a way that is visually representative of the music and the artist.

Solution
I designed an album cover for Portugal. The Man's "Evil Friends." It combines text, photography, and illustration to express the juxtapositions that are explored within the album as well as the layering of sounds.

"Evil Friends" is my favorite album by one of my favorite bands and is, therefore, one that I have listened to many times. My first step, however, was to spend time actively listening to the album and picking out the the overall tone of the music and brainstorming ways to represent this visually. I also read through the lyrics of all the tracks and tried to find recurring themes that tied the whole album together. The music is created with lots of layers of different instruments and vocals and juxtapositions. While most of the songs are upbeat and dancey, many of the lyrics are cynical and explore themes of life, death, evil, and getting older. The lyrics are, however, often sang in a tongue-in-cheek way and carry positive undertones. 

I then created a mood board. I chose to represent the juxtapositions found in the album by including an illustration of a demon while using a pink-dominated color palette as well as images of cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms in Japan represent the beauty and fleetingness of life for they are beautiful when they are in bloom but quickly wilt away. I looked at depictions and masks of oni, Japanese demons that are said to be the guardians of hell, as inspiration for the demon illustration. I chose to represent the layers of the music through overlapping layers of text, photography and illustration.