Uncommon Burners 2

Whoa, check this out: an album cover I designed is actually out there for real, like gracing an actual album! Sweet, huh? Yeah I know, I never really talk about graphic design stuff on my blog--I mean come on, this blog is supposed to be about stuff I like, not my day job. But this is different because I designed this project strictly for the fun of it; to do something other than the typical day-in, day-out corporate work I do .

Oh and guess what? This album is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from Above Ground magazine (get it here).

About the cover art: Uncommon Burners 2 is the second in a series of compilation albums put out by the label Uncommon Records. When trying to come up with an idea for the artwork, I kept circling around the thought of using fire, but didn't have any concrete way of tying it back to "burners" or "burning". Then I ran across an image of a Chinese Fire Breather and it hit me: hot MCs "spit fire" on the mic. So then I went and found a photo of a Shure SM58 mic and Photoshoped it in there, painted up the background some, and added the dragon line art to represent how the fire comes from inside you. The "Uncommon Burners 2" text I struggled with a bit, finally ended up sitting down with a sketchbook and hand drew a mess of thumbnail pencils to come up with how to work the various elements together, and then finalized the type in Illustrator.

FYI here's the back cover that I also designed:

Notice how I credited myself with my Twitter screen name? I dunno why I did that, guess it's partly because I've been meeting so many people from Twitter in real life recently that I've repeatedly been hearing "Dsicle" said out loud--first time since San Diego really. So I guess it's kinda sticking in my head now. Thanks, Wade. LOL

All said, I had a blast designing the cover art for this album. Big ups to Tyler for thinking of me to design the project, and also to my homie Ross for the advice/critique.