Tom Petty Record

Project Objective

To redesign an album cover of a contemporary artist of my choice: I chose Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes. My design needed to be a completely new, research based, concept for this album, to be released as a vinyl record / LP [12 ½” inch record album cover]. In addition, the album cover design needed to serve as the basis for a design system that included a t-shirt and a tour poster. For this project, I used Photoshop elements and tools, including color selection, layer making, adjustment layers, blending modes, and text/typography. My design needed to work in small sizes, for example, social media or watch apps, but have enough detail to work in larger applications, for example, billboards.

Rough Sketches

I wanted the album to fit the feeling of the music. I considered the individual names of each album track and the lyrics to come up with ideas for my design.

Mockups

For the front cover, I decided to put a guitar in front of a beach sunset. For the back cover, I used a dark blue to light brown gradient. The poster has a silhouette of a person walking away and leaving their shadow behind. Lastly, for the T-shirt, I put the same shadow of the man on the front, and the long road on the back, along with the names of each song.

Final Design

Refugee, Century City and Louisiana Rain provided inspiration for my final design. I settled on a silhouette of a person looking ahead, down a long road to the horizon, with obstacles but also the promise of the big city at the end.