The Trouble With Art

I've started thinking of actually making an album as "the easy part," because where we inevitably seem to run into hurdles is finishing the CD's cover art and liner notes. With rare exceptions, the artists on our label are only musical artists, not graphic designers. Some may have a pretty good idea of what they want, while others find a designer they can work with and brainstorm ideas.

I wish all of the art could be finished at approximately the same time as the recording is mastered, but it never seems to work out that way for us. At this point, both of our forthcoming releases, the Loud Family/Anton's What If It Works? and Don Dixon's The Entire Combustible World in One Small Room, are totally ready to go, but the album packages are still works in progress. The guy who's doing Dixon's graphic design is Chris Eselgroth, who has done CD art for the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the Goo Goo Dolls and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. I have no idea what the end product is going to look like, but based on his portfolio, I can't wait to see it. It's also going to be our first Digipak release.

Joe Becker, who has been a member of both Game Theory and the Loud Family, designed the cover art for What If It Works? It's based upon a Russian movie poster from 1926. I just got a copy of it a couple of days ago, and I'm still deciding how I feel about it. It certainly is eye-catching, though. The rest of the package is going to be done by Keara Fallon, who has worked with Cake and lots of other NorCal artists.

In a few years' time, we probably won't even have to bother with cover art at all; everything will just be distributed online. That will be kind of a drag, though. Even though coordinating the graphic design for our projects is always a challenge, I still love looking at cover art and will be sad if it ever goes away.