A Look Into the Making of a Band Image
San Antonio band, Abberdein, presented us with a huge opportunity to be a part of an amazing project that is already having an incredible impact. We had the privilege of designing a completely new image for the band to promote the release of their latest album, Heart Like Your Heart.
What we cover in this case study:
- Album Artwork
- Web Design
- Mobile Design
- Posters
- T-Shirts
- Stickers
CD Insert Design
We approached the album artwork design first, initially designing the cover and moving on to the complete CD insert design. With the goal of the project being to raise money for missions, we wanted to incorporate a very personal and human feel to the entire design.
The album design employs very stark contrast between the outer and inner panels of the cd insert. The outside is comprised 4 lighter panels including the album cover panel, about the project panel, and 2 complimentary illustrative panels.
The 4 inner panels feature a completely typographical layout showcasing all of the song lyrics with a subtle, complimentary background design. The lyrics to all of the album’s 12 songs nicely fill out the entire space while elegantly wrapping around the occasional heart element.
The first thing we did to capture this feel was to hand-draw the album title, “Heart Like Your Heart.” Initially, this was all we intended on crafting, but we soon found that we wanted to continue that feel in other areas of the design. This ultimately lead to the development of Jokal, a complete font available for free.
The globe element was used to embody the heart God has for his creation and combined with the consistent use of textures works together to further bring a human feel to the design.
If you enjoy great music, want to support a good cause and enjoy good design, you can purchase your own copy of the Heart Like Your Heart album.
Website Design
When designing the Abberdein website, we wanted to continue the feel of the album, but more importantly, we wanted to provide an enjoyable user experience. We pursued a clean and spacious layout the is easily browsable and caters to several different specific target audiences.
The navigational links were kept to a minimum for clarity, consolidation and flexibility. The design provides targeted information for visitors that have never heard of Abberdein by immediately displaying brief project information as well easily accessible sections for fans that already know Abberdein that are looking to purchase the latest album or view upcoming shows.
The other important audience is the booking agent. We provide the booking link prominently at the top right of the page to simplify the search process of those looking to contact Abberdein event booking.
Responsive Web Design
One of the things that really makes this project shine is its Responsive Web Design. Through the use of media queries, the Abberdein website displays a custom layout for a number of different common devices. Desktops, netbooks, iPads, iPhones and Android phone all have their own optimized version of the website. We designed numerous custom layouts for each device on every single page of the website.
With an ever-growing market of mobile devices, providing optimized layouts for each device is becoming more and more relevant. More and more users are accessing websites from a mobile device and are bringing with them the need for mobile-specific websites. Simply providing a mobile version of a site is not enough. It’s important to enhance the mobile user experience while maintaining all of the same features and functionality of the desktop version.
You can see the Responsive Web Design in action by going to the Abberdein website and resizing the width of your browser.
Print Design
In addition to the album artwork design, we had the opportunity to work on other print design as well. We designed a full-bleed 8.5” x 11”, 300ppi CD Release Concert flier. It’s always great to work on such a high resolution design where the amount of detail we are able to include comes out looking truly wonderful in print.
We also designed a pricing sheet and table signs for the Abberdein merchandise to be used at gigs and events that were consistent with the rest of the project.
Other Merchandise Design
With the T-Shirt design, we wanted to tie in all of the elements to create a symbolic representation of the project as a whole. We used the same globe that is on the Heart Like Your Heart album cover, and incorporated the illustration that is also present on the CD and other print material.
The stickers feature the iconic balloon-holding figure that is also present on the CD face. It’s a nice, simple concept that is very effective as a sticker.
Our band was doing something completely different from other projects we had done before. We sat down with the team from Bold Perspective and simply shared from our hearts what we were looking for in an album design and website. Bold Perspective took that vision and created a unique and effective design that communicates what our project is all about, presents information and resources in a way that just makes sense, and connects our audience to our project in a way we couldn’t have imagined! The website is VERY easy to keep up-to-date, which as a busy musician, is invaluable. We are very satisfied and happily recommend Bold Perspective to anyone needing to bring their vision to the world.
Ben Toalson, Abberdein
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