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I had no idea what this album would become for so many people when I started the job. I became familiar with Home through the music collective we were both a part of at the time, and the singles he posted on his Soundcloud. I was a fan of his as soon as I heard his work, and designed a cover for a collection of his early singles for an EP I called “Homage”, which he signed off on. Knowing the tone of that cover, as well as the images he chose as covers for his Soundcloud singles, I set out listening for the Odyssey design.

Setting out, I began listening to Home’s composition. The heavy synth production was reminscent of early synth music from the 1980's, but the album felt fresh overall. Despite the moody and mechanical track names, the music they held was bright, energetic, and affective. It was a very textural album, with many layers of evocative tones weaving in and out across each track.

At the time, I had an illuminated, sculptural face framed by some 70’s era Op-Art that I didn't have a plan for. Looking at it while listening to Odyssey, I saw it matched the mood of the album. I believed the mysterious, overwhelming impression the composition gave fit the totalizing absorption the music created in the listener. I very much felt sucked into Home’s world when I listened to Odyssey, and knew others would feel similarly.

As an alternative route for additional options, I went in a more vintage and technological direction. In hindsight, I don’t believe I consciously was prioritizing a black and white theme, but when I discovered the large machine cube, I knew I should pursue it. It provided a moody backdrop for a more specific foreground I had yet to find. Coming across pictures from early rocketry experiments, I found what I needed: an image of two men bemusedly watching a third interact with a machine. I thought this worked well with the mechanical backdrop, but now felt the composition needed a point of color to set it all off. I was hoping for something that spoke to the 1970’s or 80’s that I thought Home’s synthesizers nodded to. I was lucky that National Geographic did a piece on holograms in the 1980’s. The piece included an arrangement of faces that I thought worked perfectly with the rest of the piece as a colorful, abstract presence that gave the image life.

Home really liked the machine direction, and went with the more vertical orientation. Because he had some visual experience himself, he digitally tilted the image, added a grey background, and a shadow effect on the collage.