Zoser is an amazing hip-hop artist from Chicago who I worked with some years back on a CD cover, we produced a nice piece, and planned to work together in the future. So when he began his latest project (The Science) he asked me to build the visual basis for all related promotional items. Of course I jumped at the chance. In a few short years since our last collaboration, things have changed... a lot. Artists now have a myriad of avenues to promote themselves and publish their own work. Participation in social networking is now a requirement, and utilizing each network can extend the artists presence. Zoser was currently a member of Myspace and Ning, so we were off to a solid start. We then discussed the music, his vision and goals for the project. At the end of our meeting, we settled on the promotional pieces Biohertz would create - The CD Cover, Poster, Myspace page, and Ning Site integration.
Check out Zoser's Ning social network here
and Zoser's Myspace page and more music here
The first task was to create the CD cover imagery so we could carry it through the branding of all promotional materials. I took home a rough copy of the CD to have a listen and get a feel for the vibe of the music, I heard some really thought provoking lyrics over soulful tracks, plus Zoser used a book called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles as personal inspiration for the content and title of the Album. Armed with this info, it was time to start "sketching".
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SKETCHING
For me, sketching can take on multiple forms. I may lay down some base images in photoshop and sketch over the top of them, I'll sketch on my Tablet PC, on paper - whatever. In this case, I looked to photoshop to lay out my thoughts. Those thoughts kept leading me to the maturity of the music, the history of the book (which led way to a book called "The Secret" and it's cult-like following), and old wisdom. I created some concepts based on the consumption or display of knowledge
Our favorite submission was the last, the idea here was to make it appear if Zoser were inside the torn pages of an old book. He liked the concept and once approved, we were on to production.
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REFERENCE
The next step was gathering of all source materials for design. We needed a small street photoshoot to get a high quality head shot - Once that was done and I went to work gathering reference for use in Photoshop. I needed something that could serve as the source for paper, so I went online to my favorite free texture online resource cgtextures.com I found some usable images. Lastly, I needed some good fonts, dafont.com is a great source for freebies. Once I settled on my selections, it was time to bring all the elements together.
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DESIGN
Here is a breakdown of the design theory and notes I sent to the client
Front - The main concept is an image of Zoser behind torn pages from a book (inference the science of getting rich). The top most paper is the cover of the book, it contains your name the title of the book (the Science) and graphical elements. The rose is a symbol of beauty - not only in visual appeal, but in construction ; rose petals are arranged in the Fibonacci sequence - the building block code in nature. The color red represents blood and life. The small tree inside the circular graphic on the left represents knowledge and growth (through reading or listening) the faded image of the earth represents application of that knowledge to influence the world and revolution. The second torn page is like a page from a book with faded writing, which are actual quotes from the summary of The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles.
THERE is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; otherwise he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive in spirit.
The photo of Zoser is heavily modified to give a weathered effect, behind him the writing is a mirrored copy of the song titles.
Back - very similar to the front, differences are the circular logo on the bottom has been changed to incorporate an ancient symbol of infinity on top of the globe, a symbol of the infinite wisdom contained within. The track listing is in the middle. Legal and info will be added to the bottom.
The additional panels were then created to match the style we had going
Lastly the actual CD layout - kept to 3 colors for screen printing
We then incorporated this design into a poster to complete the section on printed materials
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WEB
On the web we again wanted to keep the styling of the printed materials, but were faced with the challenge of keeping consistent functionality between different sites. Zoser is using a "ning" site as his main online hub. Lucky for us, the folks over at ning like to make life easy for designers alike. There are easy to use tools for uploading headers, borders, logos, videos and more. Here's a view of the ning integration.
Myspace on the other hand is not so friendly, it takes custom code and a little "myspace voodoo" to understand what's going on. We went with a simpler approach to match the ning site. We added an overlay link to the album on iTunes. There were some videos and links to previous albums added 
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Heres a full length video from the lead single from The Science - "Wind Blows"
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FINAL
The final files were delivered to Zoser for printing and uploaded to the web. A couple weeks later I received a copy of the pressed up disk. It's pretty cool to hold a finished product in hand. Especially when the package contains such great content. Day 3 : The Science is one of my favorite CDs - with 4 more albums to complete the entire "7day series", we can only dream of what our next joining of forces will create.
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Post by Scot Scott of Biohertz
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