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DavZ set out by prioritizing the inclusion of his brand signature, a bird in flight. He was initially reluctant about using an outside designer since he had created all his previous visual designs with a more “glitched” and digital look. Because of my focus on analog-collage based design, he was concerned a cover might not accurately reflect his vision for the album. I saw this as a unique design challenege, and set out looking for a composition that would fit the tone of his project and earn his trust.

The album is a bright journey through 14 synth-laden tracks that offers a window onto a variety of tonal landscapes. Though on the whole energetic and cosmic, there were some tracks that were very introspective and still others rather bleak. The listener was a kind of tourist of these exotic spaces, and I thought this theme could work well as the album cover.

I knew DavZ wanted to have a flying bird, so I made sure to find one that would work. I settled on tracing a hawk over a page of an old “magic eye” book to give it a more abstract look. To represent the listener, I found a rather stiff looking man from a Sixties-era National Geographic and began to experiment with different backdrops and additional elements. Having worked with many clients at this point, I knew sometimes offering something different can have positive results, so I riffed off my main ideas and produced some other options that spoke to a visitor of exotic spaces.

Though it was a stylistic departure from his past work, DavZ and the label head were quite happy with the option he chose. Still leased with the other art, they used some of the alternative choices in pre-release marketing, as well as the album release stream DavZ hosted on YouTube.