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56 Bennett Street  Brighton   MA 02135   Tel  781.710.3465   eMail  melgreendesign@gmail.com

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Album Covers

Not so long ago, there was a music artform known as Album Cover Design! Remember the days that you could listen to the music and comfortably read the album notes?
I've cherry-picked the projects I enjoyed the most and also some of which posed special challenges. Whenever I picked up a new project (mostly from Rounder Records)
all that was given to me in those days was typed text, which I would painstakingly cast and have typeset, before the days of computers! Usually there were one or two photographs, or a choice of photographs ranging from tack-sharp to blurry prints, and various degrees of color slide formats, and in a couple of memorable cases.... just photocopies on paper! But, it was always a great pleasure and a challenge to design these, allowing me more freedom to experiment. My, how things changed since computers came along to "simplify" the process.

One bright and happy photograph, a lot of liner notes, and again, unusual typography that hinted at a Hawaiian cnnection resulted in an unusual bluegrass cover.

These Bluegrass and old-timey musicians almost always provided great photography, making my job a pleasure. I had the most fun using good typography to accentuate the terrific portraits.

An otherwise ordinary photograph along with vibrant colors and unusual typography resulted in a very happy client. I worked directly with Jim in getting to a design solution they really liked.
The sound track to the cult movie of the same title needed something unusual, but the title type treatment was used as is, with a collage of scenes from the movie. Reggae being such an great genre, required a very African approach to the cover. I made a magic marker drawing of the frame, into which I masked the terrific portrait and overlayed the typography. Simple and effective Rudi Cippolla was the grand old man of the San Francisco String band and mandolin scene. Many of today's luminaries, such as David Grisman revere him. The photos were great, and I hardly had to do anything but select good typography to make this cover stand out.
Just one photo to work with, no liner notes, so I made the best of it and overlaid star graphics and very simple typography

An really good portrait photograph. a choice of earthy colors and simple typography resulted in a very nice and simple LP cover.

 A few old photographs converted to duotones and simple typography against a wallpaper effect graphic, resulted in a satisfactory design my client approved of.
Designing a cover for the US version of a Fairport Convention was a terrific opportunity. Rounder Recordshad licensed this one of the first LPs featuring Doc and Merle Watson... and their family. Again I had only one photo to work with which I converted to a quadtone, and I used old looking typography in a modern way. An LP design for a Hungarian folklore group. I had only one photo to work with which I converted to a quadtone, and I used bold typography to make it stand out.

PORTFOLIO  DESIGN FOR MUSIC   Album Covers Music Promotion Print Design Web Design Logos Ads Packaging  Illustration  Fine Art  About  Home

 For more information and a FREE copy of "How to save $ Producing your CD graphics",
please contact me by e-mail at: melgreendesign@gmail.com