Over the last 5 years I have had the privilage of releasing 3 albums through Cardamar in Holland. Marco also gave me the opportunity to design my own covers for the CDs.
The first release was “Of Beauty & Mystery”. Since I had been giving it out for a few months before it was picked up by Cardamar I had an indie cover and an official release cover. Below are both :
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The official cover shown below features my own photography as well. I took the picture one morning as the fog was rolling across the field behind my church. Then a few clips and overlaps and we have a grand chillout cover.
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Then about a month later I gathered the leftover tracks from “Of Beauty & Mystery” and asked Marco what he thought of doing a free MP3 release as a mini-album. He liked the idea so I titled it “Itinerary” and pulled together a quick design. I like the hanging sign as the title box. My wife says she likes the cover for Itinerary a lot.
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Then after a bit of a pause, I started writing music once again. From that effort came a secondary project. After a few months of name changes and figuring out what tracks to include, Marco and I released “In Medias Res”. For this design I had my friend Shelley Beber (now Kinder) take artist photos of me. We went to a park one afternoon and did a bunch of different poses. Because of this the design is very photo based with some overlay of grunge/outdoor elements. I like the design, but I still don’t know if it works with the music.
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After the release of IMR, because my creative brain does strange things, I didn’t write music for nearly a year. I was involved in a lot at my church and my music arrangement software kind of went corrupt on me so my music just went below ground. But slowly I started messing around again and recently released an online MP3 album called “Please, Remain Calm” (which you can download here). I released one track every saturday for 8 weeks and included hi-res artwork with each download. Here is the cover of PRC :
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So, that is the design story of my music so far. I plan on releasing a 4 track drum&bass EP in the next few months, but it doesn’t have much of a title yet, let alone a cover design. Expect to see it posted here when I am done.
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Tags: Behold Studios, Cardamar Music, Graphic Design, Scott Zeilenga

