Case Study: 100 Percent Sound Records
album designs
The Vision
Toc N Face, a unique hip hop/metal duo wanted an eye-catching album cover that wasn’t your typical loud, flashy “cars-and-cash” design.
The Concept
I started my design career creating websites, shirts, and album covers for my own alt-rock band many years ago, and I drew upon that same energy, grunge, and roughed-up urban feel to create this cover.
”Killing da beast” refers to the concept of overcoming one’s darker tendencies, and so I wanted to present something that looked like it was always watching, lurking in the shadows. I also wanted the cover to look like an image that had been discarded time and time again, and yet it always manged to come back, as fierce as ever, waiting to be vanquished once again.
The Vision
100 Percent Sound was producing a compilation album to relaunch their label. The album name was going to be “Gas Money.”
The Concept
While I could have easily gone with the obvious gas station/car/fill-’er-up direction, I knew that the record label came to me because of my more minimalistic, rock-inspired designs. I also wanted to play with the idea of something being rediscovered in honor of the fact that this album was a relaunch of the label.
This image of a branded gas mask uncovered in the debris covering the forest floor, paired with hand lettering and minimalist sans serif fonts in toxic chartreuse was both eye-catching and intriguing, capturing the mystery of what the label’s new collection of artists would sound like, and assuring that the songs contained within would be hard-hitting and unexpcted.