aeblog

visual

This whole album artwork/packaging design is hard. I am so excited to be able to use some of Tanja Hollander's photographs as I know they will provide a beauty and simplicity that will draw people to the album. This is going to be great, but I decided a long time ago that I wanted to include every single word sung or spoken on the album in the liner notes. For one thing, some of the words are audibly obscured (on purpose, of course!), so I want to afford another way of deciphering them, but more importantly, this album is about words and the musical aspects of words, both spoken and sung. Words are primarily aural and conceptual, but they are also visual. So my challenge is to focus on this latter aspect as a complement to the first two which I explore in the music itself. I did briefly consider having no words at all, I mean NOTHING, as a sort of extreme counterpoint to the music, but rather quickly realized that this could be quite annoying and would probably be a cop-out.

So I have written out all the words - a task which took quite some time - and now I am experimenting with possible arrangements, trying to let them be beautiful and interesting and legible and complementary to Tanja's photographs. I have several ideas and have made some good progress in the past few days, but I have often felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities that present themselves.

I think that I am more aurally creative than visually creative. Hopefully this is the case, or I would be in the wrong creative endeavor. I do know what I like visually and have had experience with another album design along with my various websites, but this is tricky business. Not only does it all have to look beautiful and professional, but it also has to mesh somehow with my music. This is another reason why I am excited about Tanja's photographs. I think that we both approach our creations similarly in that we look for bits of beauty in the world that might be otherwise overlooked, and highlight them. Simple things; everyday things. I guess, perhaps, we are both looking for aesthetic evidence in this world we live in. I never cease to be amazed at how much there is out there and I want to spend all day every day being with it.