Whispers by The Phoenix Within – Album Artwork

This particular project came to me while working with a local Philadelphia record label, Know Hope Records. The artist was close to releasing their album, Whispers, and needed artwork. I discussed ideas for the artwork with the artist and my manager at the time. We somehow got to an idea of words being scattered on the wind, which evolved into using a graffiti script design of the album title overlayed on a photo of the ocean.

We were getting down to the cut off time for production, but I was having a hard time getting the approval of the artist. I finally sat the artist down and told them, “I will design anything you want. This is your product. Let’s design what you want.” After a bit more discussion, we scrapped the original idea two weeks before production after deciding to focus on a concept of children spreading secrets. The idea of secrets lasting forever through whispers was also mentioned. I got to work and developed a single line drawing of two children whispering secrets to each other.

Ultimately, the artist was a lot happier with this design. This is still one of my favorite projects, because I was able to take control of the situation and made a piece the client was proud of.

This piece uses space, texture, balance, and rhythm to its advantage. While I didn’t receive much feedback on this particular piece from my peers, I wanted to redo the linework since I am more practiced at the Pen Tool in Illustrator now than I was when this project was created. This led to smoother curves throughout the piece.