When Kath a.k.a. Manic Mundane asked me if I could create an artwork for her debut EP, I immediately said yes, though I only heard of Kath’s music through some of her IG posts @manicmundanemusic , I already dig her style and genre of music, and it always adds up my enthusiasm to work with artists and bands that I like. Coming up with the idea of the artwork wasn’t that hard for me, since Kath already had some thoughts about the name and gave me an access to her early recordings that helped me out with the concept, and apart from that she gave me the total freedom, so I just went crazy, got on to my iPad and started scribbling. During that time I was in the process of picking up my own personal drama and getting back on track, so I was busy, preparing stuff for the new job and going in and out of the house, and while I’m at it, I kept on listening to Kath’s early recordings, which helped a lot in the process, and she also sent a few references of artworks, where one stood out for me, it was this animated surreal Gif artwork by George Redhawk, it was a not fully-formed woman’s face and the rest were just looping fragments around her. I got inspired by that artwork and I added my own style and concept of unwanted thoughts, making them lively and making characters out of our personal demons and monsters that our own mind creates, it’s basically a metaphor of how sometimes we can get out of control and let all these thoughts take over and leave us to rot. The whole artwork was done in Procreate on my outdated iPad Pro, from the rough sketches through the final line art, and I love the idea of just randomly doodling whatever creatures and patterns I create, so the only rough sketches I’ve done for this one was the face and the structures, the rest I just let myself go crazy. In terms of the layout I thought at first it would be nice to create a 4 folding album jacket if Kath decides to release a vinyl for it in the future, so I ended up extending the artwork more on the sides. I also added a custom made font for the name, album title and the lyric titles so it would match the artwork. As for the colors, it took time for us to decide which colors we should go for, at first we just wanted to stick with black and white, eventually we moved to a 2 color combo, then we decided to have at least some contrast and highlight the creatures on the drawing, I totally forgot how we ended up with the final color combo, but for sure there was blue and violet as one of the options, but majority went for the maroon over orange and just highlighted some of the creatures with a dull color. I told Kath I always look forward to work with something related to music, for me it’s something that I don’t totally consider a job, specially if you work with bands and artist where you can connect to their style and genre of music, and specially if they put that total confidence on you, and I couldn’t have done this one without Kath’s trust.
Please check out Manic Mundane's Narrative Three EP out now
get the limited edition cassette tape here Analog Amigo Records
Two fold Album cover jacket, front and back.
Two fold Album cover jacket, interior.
The complete artwork.
Lyric pages, acknowledgments and other info.
CD mock-up.
Complete artwork and text page mock up for both cd and vinyl.
Images taken from Analog Amigo's IG account, cassette tape produced by Analog Amigo records, it was easy to work on this one since they've provided me the template for the cassette tape and album jacket.
I custom made the font for this album.
Here's the process video from sketch to the final look, music
by Manic Mundane - Morphine/First of Winter.