Client: Daryl Kelly, AKA Duhral
Project: Designing his debut album cover
Description: We were recently approached by a local artist to help him design his debut album cover. This is always exciting. And scary.
Think about it, an album cover does a lot to either correctly or incorrectly lead you unto assumptions about what the album might sound like, especially if the album is for an artist you’ve never heard of before. Album artists wield some power. So we Skyped with Daryl and hashed out some ideas. This guy is early twenties with his eyes on the prize. He’s got a 5 year plan to the top outlined on a whiteboard in his home recording room. He was a great guy to work with from the beginning. He gave us the entire album to listen to as well as lyrics and themes he wanted to focus on in our cover concepts.
Rough sketch of album concept - Hoodzpah
Ames and I went away and drew up some rough ideas. We sent them to Daryl, picked a fave, and then went to the digital drawing board to start hacking it out. It all starts with the pen tool in Illustrator. Once we had the linework all drawn out, we began the tedious process of digital coloring. Then Amy and I and Daryl sat staring at the almost finished work, finely tuning the juxtaposition of the individual elements until they were in perfect array.
Daryl thoroughly enjoyed the process and results of our work. In fact, we lightly twisted his arm to give us this very lovely testimonial about our work:
“From the moment our first skype meeting began, I knew choosing Hoodzpah to do the artwork for my first album was the right decision. This was my first time hiring anyone to help me on this kind of project and Jennifer and Amy made it a great experience. They understood how important this project was to me and pushed themselves that much harder to exceed my expectations. I was continually impressed with the Hood’s. Their hard work matched there incredible talent and it showed every step of the way. I look forward to working with them again.”
And now for a little more about local Orange County artist Duhral (pronunciation key: dew-rell) and his album via a short Q&A:
Influences? “Some of my hip hop influences are Cunninlynguists, The Roots, Outkast, Atmosphere, Grieves, Hieroglyphics”
When will the album be on iTunes for purchase? ” January 24th – It’ll also be available Amazon, Spotify, and Bandcamp as well.”
What’s next now that you’ve finished your first album? “Next up, I’m going to be doing some local shows and making more music.”
Finally, a taste. Here’s my personal favorite song from Duhral’s album “Beautiful/Dirty Cruel”. Check out more songs at Daryl’s Bandcamp site here.
