Blue² album art The story behind this cover design

Precisely a year ago Andrew Danso contacted me about an awesome new project he was working on: his second solo album (or actually his new EP) for which he asked me to do the cover design. I happily took the job and started working on the album art. We’re a year further now, the EP is still coming up and the entire project went through a lot over the past year. Last week we decided to revamp the entire album art for several reasons and because I didn’t want to waste the first cover design I am hereby sharing it with you.

In February 2010 I was provided with Andrew’s story behind the EP, two short demo track pieces and absolute creative freedom. Despite that lack of actual musical influence I had enough to work with, his ideas and story instantly gave me loads of inspiration.

Blue² is mainly themed around the feeling of leaving for good, being free and more acceptant towards rejections from the past. There are a bunch of other aspects as well, but for this post I will keep it at this. In this cover I highlighted a new start and the path towards a brighter self. I also tried to reflect the part of appreciation and being more open minded; the acceptation of past denials. I visualized that with the visage on the front cover, the man with his arms spread open embracing his new future image. Evidently the EP sets a more dramatic mood, both that and the actual title of the EP made me go for the color usage as it is.

A few days and conversations later I presented the near-final concept to Andrew and we were both extremely satisfied with the result. After finalizing the details and doing some more tweaks the cover design you see before you was done. Since that day Andrew and his project have been through a lot, altering the story of the whole thing.

Over the past weeks we started talking about the entire project and the album art I made. We’re both still very enthusiastic about this cover design, but because the story has changed over time we felt that the EP has outgrown its artwork. In a cover design I strive for a solid visual interpretation of the story, which isn’t the case anymore with this design because of the shifting ideas. So like I said: I will be revamping the entire album art for Andrew Danso’s upcoming EP "Blue²" and of course I will keep you updated on that as well.

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