I was tasked to design a vinyl cover and chose Hayley Williams’ song, SIMMER. I wanted to create a piece that had a comedic touch while keeping true to the artists' artistic theme. My goal was to create a cover that was fully illustrated, with an intentionally rough, imperfect look to go along with the simmering flowers I had envisioned and the song's emotions of rage and heartbreak.
Initially, I was debating whether to do this project in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. I thought about literally boiling flowers, taking photos of them, and then editing the photos in Adobe Photoshop. I think this idea would be very interesting and I may still recreate it in the future.
My creative process relied heavily on sketch work while also listening to the song SIMMER on repeat. I started by sketching 9 different versions of covers to explore different ideas and themes from the music before choosing the final concept to continue to develop in Adobe Illustrator. I used the pen tool and drew out every aspect of the design. I chose to use colours like red, yellow and orange (and a variety of grey tones) to symbolize a mixture of emotions like anger, sadness, and love.
I sketched out a version of the title SIMMER and brought it into Adobe Illustrator where I edited and distorted it. This is the only form of typography used in this project.
Something I would do to improve this project would be to include more variety amongst the flowers. I have three main flowers, and there are small changes between those to make the 12 flowers illustrated. I would also want to increase the contrast in the illustration. The colours in some flowers and the pot are toned down, and similar to one another.
The primary program I used for this project was Adobe Illustrator. I created all aspects of the illustration myself. I also used Adobe Photoshop where I made the mockups.
