#6: Detouring For Album Designs
There’s some rocky parts of this trail, but this spot is just a pretty outlook.
This is jumping ahead in the overall story of this album, but I’m revealing the album art and it seems like I should make a quick little detour for it. Which means I get to write about design, and that is my second favorite thing to write about behind music. So, of course I’m eager to share the process of designing an album cover!
In case you don’t know me, I should clue you in on an important trivia fact about me. I’m not professionally a musician. I’m definitely trying to be, and I’ve played music all my life, but that is (currently) not how I keep the lights on.
For nearly a decade, I have professionally been a different type of creative: a designer. I specialize in brand design, but have done all the jobs you would think of when someone says ‘designer.’ My career began with a pursuit of the fine arts, so I regularly tap into my illustrative toolbox.
The music part of making a music album is incredible. It delights every aspect of the musician and writer in me. But when things progressed and I could start thinking about album art, well, that was pretty incredible too!
Album art is important. It’s the packaging of the product. It’s the visual thing that tells people what to expect when they open it up. It gives the album a shelf presence, helping it stand out in the sea of albums and catch the eye of the audience you’re trying to reach.
But the challenge is turning an auditory style into a visual style.
I didn’t want the album cover to say punk rock when the album insides says soft folk. So the visuals have to share the right message, as well as another very important goal: I need to like it! After all, I’m going to be seeing a LOT of this album cover, so it’d be a real shame if it wasn’t something I liked looking at.
As the sound of this album started to find its feet, it set my designer brain aflame with ideas. All of these songs are rooted in the wilderness, in origin, in metaphor, and in feel. I wanted the album art to capture a sense of that, without the on-the-nose approach of a snapshot of a mountain. And I definitely did not want a picture of me on the cover. So an illustrative route was a no-brainer.
I had found an illustrator who had a hand-crafted aesthetic that really resonated with me. Her work utilized a lot of color and texture that fit into the vision I had for the cover. This is such a great aspect of collaboration, because I knew where I was headed, but having someone come in and bring their hand to the work opens up all kinds of creative doors.
After seeing some of her first ideas, we found this balance of hand-crafted folk art with retro-style blocks of color. It reminded me of old National Park posters, which have become a foundational piece of inspiration for all the visuals surrounding this album.
I spent some time playing with layouts and typography and color palettes, trying to get the feel of it just right. And as good designs often do, once I found the right design, it opened up the box for more designs and ideas. Within a week of work, I had assembled the pieces to the album cover and finished out all the other creative pieces to go with it. The back design, disc label, promotional pieces, lyric videos … it all fell into place.
Finishing a design is a lot like finishing a song. It’s really hard to estimate how long it takes to finish it, but you just know when it’s done. And you know when you’re starting to overcook it and when you need to stop meddling.
There’s really no bigger lesson or metaphor in all of this. This moment of time in designing my own album art was simply a sweet moment. It was a beautiful intersection of the skills and experiences God has placed in my life, and it was something I hadn’t really expected to be able to do. But today is just one of those times where I should pause and look at the vista, appreciating this beauty for what it is: a gift.
The best is yet to come.
Madison Marlyn
8.25.2025
