Synesthesis: Creating An Album Cover for A Techno-Orchestral Music Project

Imperium (2020) is the title of a collaborative mini-album by the duo Deo & Gregory Go. The album is currently available to stream at Youtube. In this project I was involved in providing the artwork for the album cover. I was tasked to provide the artwork and album cover that could perfectly captures the sound of the album in the form of visual artwork.

Creating The Moodboard

After Deo and Gregory Go contacted me with this request, I decided to schedule a meeting and interview between the two musicians. The duo comes from a very different musical background and references, with Gregory Go having a passion in techno music and Deo as a seasoned arranger and clarinet player in an orchestra. Moreover, I also give the demo of the album a listen to capture the spirit of the album. My personal takeaways from this was that the produced music can also be described as these 2 worlds colliding in one mini-album

All the gathering process leads to one conclusive vision for the artwork; to combine the spirit of techno (future) and baroque (past) music. And so that leads to the moodboard for the artwork.

The Implementation

To have a better vision of what the album cover could look like, I started searching for Renaissance paintings first. This was done to try to capture the Renaissance spirit of the songs in Imperium. After searching a lot of Renaissance painting that fits the moodboard, I stumbled upon "The Fall of The Rebel Angel" by Pieter Bruegel (1562). I then decided to fit this painting into the cover for the dynamics and mood of the painting which I thought fit very well to the album's heavy characteristics.

In order to also represent the electronic music influence, I decided to use a rainbow line to add colors and composition of the cover as well as adding the album title and the musicians' names. For the texts, I used Graphique Pro Next font.

After talking to the musicians about the process, difficulty, and my own limitations, they agreed on having me use an excerpt of a Renaissance painting for the artwork.

The Cover

After gathering the moodboard, I decided that I also have to listen to the music itself as well. Fortunately, both musicians agreed to give me a look (or should I say... listen?) to the mastered album. After hearing the 5-song demo, I get a better clearance of what the album cover should look like.