This Great Distance - Album Art

Music is incredibly important to me. Many don't know I spend much of my free time writing and recording for my ambient/indie-rock project, Aramid. In fact, I do everything myself, including design and photography. For my second album, I wanted to design a cover that conveyed the subtle themes behind the music – the flow of water from mountains to sea, isolation, and memories tied to the places I've been. Since the music was entirely instrumental, the artwork would be vital to the theme...and a challenge I was excited for.

The initial concept sprang from a trip to BC in 2017. The locations I visited and the photos I captured influenced my songs and later formed the basis for my artwork.

My first draft started with a color-shifted photo taken from the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge.

This image was then fed through a bitmap sorter (larixk.nl/experiments/sort), producing an abstraction of the original photograph. I did this to evoke the feeling of churning water without resorting to a literal representation.

I then purchased a canvas print of the above image to hang on my office wall. I was satisfied and thought my work was accomplished, but seeing the texture of the canvas print inspired me. I could use this canvas texture to add a more organic feel to the final cover!

After photographing the canvas, I decided it would be unfortunate to crop the image to a square ratio. Instead, I created a sort of "Polaroid" layout with supporting text to create balance. My final epiphany was adding coordinates that relate to the album's themes. These coordinates reference 4 mountains of the Cascades – Garibaldi, Baker, Rainier, and St. Helens – which influenced a number of songs I wrote for the album.

In addition to the album cover, I secretly bundled an ink drawing with all Bandcamp downloads. This is a fictional map inspired by real locations around the Pacific Northwest. It tells a rough story of the album from start to finish, with each song loosely connecting to these locations.

Other Artwork

I design original artwork for all my releases. I wanted to detail the most meaningful one for my portfolio, but here are more examples of what I've created in the past.