Awesome. I had to search to find the hypnotoad.

I know that the image is a joke, but in case the underlying design is actually an option I feel that it looks too much like a John Tesh album cover. I understand that it's a classical/jazz album, but that's no reason to discard previous styles that one might associate with Serj. Also, to steal a bit of criticism that Jepman gave someone else, it looks as though you're trying to fit the text within the image, when a better way to go about things is to look at the text and choose an image that fits the text, rather than putting text in "empty" spaces. You dig?

I completely agree, and honestly out of 6GB of pictures there aren't very many that would make a good album cover. I think the text on the image I posted is no where near finished, but I dig the concept of it. The image that WB and Serj WANT to use is of him playing the piano on a black background. It's pretty bland and dark, so I am doing that design as well as a few other brighter ones for their consideration.

For inspiration I've been looking at a lot of Andrea Bocelli, Enya, and Celine Dion album arts and trying to create kind of a bright but elegant design like that for Serj. At the end of the day, Serj likes more artistic albums than bland ones, but I'm hoping the color scheme and energy of some of the more 'bland' covers appeals to him.

Below is an early early (like 2 hours of work) concept of what WBR is looking for. This is far from final as well, but I don't really like it to begin with.

Also, I appreciate all this feedback, it's very helpful.

I'm kind of surprised he doesn't already have someone to do this. Someone with a huge portfolio and years of commercial design and marketing experience. Who he didn't just, like, catch tinkering in photoshop one day.

Cheaper this way.

Well, it didn't fall into my lap as simply as it seems, but a lot of the artwork is done by this guy George that works at Serjical Strike- and George would typically be doing the designs for free as it's just sort of part of his daily routine in the office. He's been working for SSR for about 7 or 8 years now. So, it's actually costing them about the same, if not a bit more than usual to design this cover. They saw my portfolio and other work before just handing me the job of designing the cover, but yes, it does seem rather odd, doesn't it? A lot of things at this label are rather odd.

But probably a lot less profitable this way. No offense SAJN, but it needs to stand out in a rack of 500 other covers.

I don't take any offense to it, I understand and completely agree. I didn't say I was the right guy for the job, I just said I was excited to be doing it. Although, the designs are going to continue to be polished and re-designed until Serj is happy with them- so at the end of the day, it's Serj's call, not mine.

How many people just walk into a music shop and buy something random because of the album art these days anyway?

Cover flow

Hahah! But Baconfish has a point. I really question if album art is a statistically significant factor in record sales. Looking back at the history of popular music, the only album covers that ever matter are the ones that are absolutely amazing, like Wish You Were Here or Abbey Road. And I don't think they helped sell, I think they helped create icons. There are plenty of chart-topping classic albums that have artwork ranging from good to decent to ****.

I spent 4 minutes putting this together in an attempt to illustrate what I think they might be going for with that concept. Obviously ignore the overall colors and production value as I had the one small image that you posted to work with. Since the theme involves "the dead" (I presume, since I've seen it on both covers you've posted), adding imagery to that effect adds a lot, hence the cemetery in the background. Even better if there were maybe skeletons rising from the graves. Not full on Army of Darkness, but an arm reaching up here, a skeleton in the background there. It maintains the "dark" background theme, while not being bland or boring. Also, imagine the piano where you would expect it to be in the photo.

I think album art would have been more important in the days before the cd when vinyl sleeves actually allowed us to have decent images.

Haha, I like the idea of the graveyard, how very hair-metal of you :p If anything, we are trying to ignore the 'Dead' aspect of it. We are actually trying to find a way to combine 'Elect the Dead' and 'Symphony' without even using the word dead, but that isn't going to happen.

Elect the Symphony

you can pay me later

Symphonic Killings of the Dead Elected Symphony of Death

As much as I would like to make an offhanded, jerkoff-ish comment.. that's seriously pretty awesome dude. Alot of people would do very dirty things to be in your position.

Wow thats really awesome congratulations!

If you want/need critiques on it let me know and I'd be more than happy to help.

So the album is taking a bit of a different direction, I created this mock up of an old school brochure that you'd get at an OLDE TIMEEE show- what do you guys think so far? This might be in the inside flap or possibly the back itself.

(Keep in mind this is a mock up, the finished product will be a LOT more cleaned up without the alignment issues and colors of this one)

How's the health plan? Will they pay for Serjery?

I like this direction so much more. I hope there's a new cover or something along these lines? I'm sorry but those other two would stand out as a bad photoshop on any CD rack.

AHAHAHAHAHA PUNS HAHAHAHAHA SO FUNNY AHAHAHAHA CANT STOP HAHAHAAH LAUGHINGAHAHAHAHA

You're starting to catch on.

shut up thrawn nobody likes you crawl in your hole and make me some more beats GIVE ME DUBSTEP WHORE

Wow I really like that. In fact I'd argue that would be a great cover, not inside flap. Or maybe for the cover look up old movie posters and use those for inspiration.

It's definitely a good start but all of the fonts need to be different, especially the script you're using for the title.

Oh, wow. That looks like he's about to go grave-digging and then tie a maiden to a train-track.

I do really like the more antique style cover, though.

Yes, your new idea is the direction you should head. As mb said, the fonts need to change. Typography is an art in itself.

Also Tony... hahahaha. I didn't notice that before. Brilliant!

To elaborate, I count 6 different fonts, and that's not considering the different variations of a font. Try to limit it to 3.

Also, if you're able to do so, the word Philharmonia should have the same character spacing as the rest of that banner. The image should be edited accordingly to allow this.

I realize it's a banner, but couldn't you put orchestra on the bottom? I think that'd be easier than rearranging the whole piece to provide for spacing. I actually read it out of order to begin with, but perhaps that's simply because of the spacing?

I see what you mean kirbs, but it reads fine when it's in the banner I think.