I recently did a spot of work for local singer-songwriter Daniel Pearson. Daniel commissioned me to come up with a logo and cover for his soon-to-be-released record, entitled Satellites.

Once budget and deadlines were all agreed I got to work on some ideas for the logo. I also produced some very quick thumbnails of possible directions the cover might take -- at this very rough stage, this was just to see if anything jumped off the page in terms of concept, colour or composition.

Daniel had given me some insight into the themes of the record, mentioning that 'communication' was a strong one. For me personally, I liked the idea of the circular telephone motif, as it was indicative of an orbiting satellite without taking the too-obvious route of actually using an illustration of a satellite.

As luck would have it, Daniel liked this design also, so I set about refining the idea:

While I would have been happy with moving forward with any of these designs, as soon as I had mocked up the black on red version I knew I'd found my favourite. More and more, I'm finding myself attracted to the idea of refining something by removing the elements which don't contribute to the overall idea -- leaving only the idea or concept behind, with no distractions.

Knowing that the record was being released digitally, it made even more to sense to have a bold but simple, almost iconic, cover which would really stand out at the sizes it would be displayed in the iTunes store.

I always try to be as sensitive and diplomatic as possible when outlining my own opinions to a client. Obviously I want to create work that I'm happy with but at the same time ensure that the client is happy and that the choices are made as a partnership rather than me dictating the direction of any particular project.

I think that when the right design is there, however, there is no need for discussion! Once again, I was chuffed to have Daniel share my preferences and give me the go ahead to produce the final cover design:

In terms of the process from initial ideas through to final design, this was almost a model project from start to finish -- delivered on-time and to-cost!

Daniel was a pleasure to work with and you can check out some tracks from the record on his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/danielpearsonofficial