My Favorite Hobby: Redesigning Album Art
I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. It started out in the early days of iTunes, when you could customize an album’s artwork. I noticed that sometimes, the art that was automatically pulled in was terrible. Some were poor quality scans from a CD insert. Some were simply low resolution. So I used to just browse the internet looking for higher quality scans. Then I noticed, sometimes the color was way off. Maybe it was too warm or cold. Then, I began thinking, hey I could remake the album if I found out the font they used, and had a high res picture. I would then recreate as much as I could with vector graphics, and down the road I went.
Years later, here are some of the works I’m more proud of, before and after my redesign.
Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun (2008)
The original album cover definitely has a strong personality, and maybe the “kitchen sink” design strategy was common around that time. I liked how bright it felt, but I also felt it was chaotic and distracting. I wanted to make an album cover that was more focused. I like to start album redesign projects by looking at all of the promotional and marketing materials for the album, as well as any pictures on the back of the album, or any inserts that came with it.
For this album, there was a deluxe box edition of the album that had some additional bonus material for the more serious fans. I noticed that it included a booklet, that presented a sort of alternate simple take on the album cover, with a blue background and block lettering stretched tall. This served as my inspiration for my remake of the cover.
I copied the lettering as it was, but decided to make a softer blue background, changing the shade to be less vibrant, and a slight radial gradient to give the effect of sunlight. I also wanted to bring something from he original album cover, so I found some orange images and placed them in the corners, as if the were suns shining on the lettering.
Lastly, I added a vectorized version of Brian Wilson’s real signature, which provided a nice contrast the block lettering of the album name. The final image turned out just as I wanted it.
Joni Mitchell - Shine (2007)
Released in 2007 when Joni was almost 64, Shine is her final studio album, and her first album of original material since 9 years earlier in 1998. Originally, Joni wanted to be done recording in 1998, but she felt inspired with the war with Iraq going on and other societal things on her mind. She also had a chance to pair these songs with a ballet, which was an appealing opportunity for her.
The official album cover is all about the ballet, which the songs are paired to during performances. The songs themselves however, could be listened to as if it was just another Joni album, completely independent of a ballet or performance. With it being Joni’s final album, I felt that the cover didn’t do her, the songs, or her long career any justice whatsoever. I wanted to put Joni on the front cover for one last time, front and center. And I wanted her to look like a badass in her old age. I wanted her picture to reflect the clever and sometimes angry commentary that the song lyrics contained.
I scanned and searched for the best possible portrait of Joni from around 2007 to use. Nothing from this period proved to accomplish what I wanted however. So, I’ve fibbed a bit with the timeline here. I found a varied and extensive photoshoot for New York Fashion magazine from January 2015 with the perfect photo.
Joni looks… like she doesn’t care she’s being photographed, almost a little annoyed with the photographer, yet content and calm. The cigarette was the perfect cherry on top. It’s no longer “cool” to smoke, but she doesn’t care, which almost is cool in of itself. Looking at her face, she doesn’t care. Her lyrics say otherwise however.
With the design, color, and tone of the rest of the cover, I wanted a bit of juxtaposition. I went for a muted black background to be the opposite of “Shine”. I was happy to find this photoshoot making Joni look cool in her old age, and I’m very happy with the final image, even if she’s older in the photo than she was during the recording of the album.
Mina - Frutta E Verdura (1973)
For this album, I didn’t like the washed out photos, where Mina was not even close to looking at the camera. It’s like when someone has fingerprint smudges on their phone camera and wonders why they photos are blurry. Perhaps they were going for a dreamy / glowing effect. I wasn’t really a fan regardless. With most of the album cover being a solid single color, I felt that it could use some focus with the imagery.
I found a single image of Mina from the photoshoot for the album that I felt was better than the 4 that were used. I wanted to use just one image instead of 4, and I wanted it be black and white filtered to be the same color as the album. Also, I have a thing with the color navy blue. I tend to hate it. I didn’t want to drastically change the color, so I decided to warm up the blue slightly so it was more palatable for my taste.
The finished cover is focused, clean, and consistent with itself.
Joni Mitchell - Dog Eat Dog (1985)
Dog Eat Dog. This album came out right in the middle of the 80’s, right in the middle of the Reagan years. There were so may political, social, and economic issues changing during this time, and Joni had a lot to say about it. As the original art and album title denote, this album is about anger. Anger in response to what was going on in the U.S. and the world. Commercialism, greed, crooked government and religions. You name it.
The original cover does indeed capture the feeling Joni was feeling and expressing very well, it’s jut not my favorite interpretation. Before I came to appreciate the album’s songs and messages, I hated the album cover. Joni looked ghostly white and weird. Full disclosure, I have remade this album cover 3 times. This is the most recent version.
After some initial correct and warranted feedback on Reddit from my first attempt of the art remake, I wanted to hearken back to some original concepts and include the anger and chaos of the original. In researching the album art’s history, I found an interview where Joni said she had painted some dogs and presented it to the record company at Geffen Records, but David Geffen himself requested that she “put her kisser” on the album cover, so she reworked it to have her on it.
I was able to find one, only ONE terrible quality picture on the internet of a single released from the album of the song “Shiny Toys” with what I think may have been the originally proposed album art. It’s a painting Joni did herself of a bunch of crazed looking abstract dogs. I tracked down a higher resolution (but not by much) photo of the entire painting, and edited it so the colors were more vibrant, and so the reds and yellows were more visible.
I decided to use a font resembling the original album cover, and to make the letters oversized and stretching over the chaos of the multicolored painting of the dogs. For now, this is my favorite version, and it still gives off a great 80’s vibe, and matches the tone and emotion of the original album well enough. Someday I hope the full painting get’s a high resolution scan or photo, it’s one of my favorites of her paintings.
Van Halen - Balance (1995)
For Van Halen’s Balance, I just was never a fan of the original. It’s appropriately grungy for the 90’s, if that’s your thing anyway. It was unique and clever wordplay to have some conjoined twins (an old photoshop by the way, actually two separate kids) on a see-saw. I get it. But it’s still not my favorite.
Admittedly, I didn’t do a ton of work for this one. I found an image of the band used on the back of the original album (or possibly an insert). I thought it was very crisp and balanced. And since it was the last Van Halen album with Sammy Hagar, I thought it would be proper to put all 4 of their faces on their final album together.
What I did do was subtle. Upon closer inspection, I found out that the image of the 4 guys wasn’t so… balanced. The column on the left, including photos of Alex Van Halen (top) and Michael Anthony (bottom), was noticeably wider than the right column with Sammy Hagar (top) and Eddie Van Halen (bottom). So I masked each of the 4 guys’ images so they were all perfect squares, and took up the same space. Now it was truly balanced.
Secondly, I didn’t love that Alex Van Halen was the image in the first slot. It didn’t really matter, but Eddie was the leader and main songwriter of the group since the beginning. I wanted him to have a slot on the front row. I also noticed Alex and Michael’s images on the left were both dark in the background, while Sammy and Eddie’s photos were lighter in the background. Again, didn’t feel balanced. So I shuffled the photos around to my liking. I added the band name and album name and called it a day. I get more excited looking at this album cover as the songs pop up than the original, I’m very happy with it.
Mina - I Discorsi (1969)
Oh boy. This album art. The original art direction is… interesting. Is this a bed with a weird slinky coil behind? That’s what I thought it was for a few years. I think I’ve since figured out it’s a wicker chair, but still. Now for the part you’re thinking about right now… what the hell is going on with her face in the original, right? Her eyes, teeth, skin tone. What is happening? What I’ve learned about album covers from the 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s is that they used to airbrush things they deemed… needing improvement? I’m guessing they wanted to make her skin tone more even or tan? And they wanted to whiten her teeth? And make her eyes “pop” more? What results is a very creepy looking photo of Mina.
I had avoided listening to music from this album of hers for a while before giving in, just because of how odd and creepy the art was. It was a real shame because some of her absolute best tracks from this period are from this album. Because of this, the art is a major fail for the music. I had to fix this. I don’t know how to explain when I decide to completely change the direction of the art vs. keeping it as similar as possible, but this is one where I wanted to really just change her face if I could. So I went to work I started searching for alternate photos from the photoshoot for the album. I was able to find a compilation album from 1969 titled “Regalia” that just so happened to use a photo from the same photoshoot. The problem was, I couldn’t find the photo in high enough quality for my standards.
There was really only one option left. I had to buy the Regalia LP from 1969, ideally in great condition. And so I did. I found a near-mint condition copy on Discogs for $12.98.
I scanned the LP cover with a high-res scanner, and began tweaking it to get the colors right. The photo was perfect, and featured a more natural looking photo, both in terms of Mina’s pose and the fact there were no edits or air-brushing done in post. It looked great. I also recreated the red border and lettering so that the entire cover was recreated from scratch. Very happy with this one, and now I no longer cringe when I see this album cover.