About the Project

Jars of Clay have had a pretty solid careers worth of album art, most of it I enjoyed. I believe that Much Afraid, If I Left the Zoo and Good Monsters all had great album art. Unfortunately I do not feel the same about the new album’s cover, and that’s a shame since this album is a solid step up for the band.

The art, however, is pretty weak. I don’t think this is the type of band or album that requires there to be a photo of the band on the cover. I also feel that some of the inside geometrical illustrations were cooler than the actual cover. So I took this opportunity to redesign the package how I see it. What I ended up doing was making strips of colors (thanks to Illustrator step & repeat for saving me from the math headaches) and I colored them differing hues from dark green-blue to light teal to represent the “long fall back to earth”. Add in some nice texture and nice type, and that’s it. The cover is in the upper stratosphere and as you open up the 3 or 4 page panel spread downward, you see the full illustration. I also made a T-shirt to coincide with the art.

This is a very “indie” sounding album for Jars of Clay. I feel art such as this fits the feel much better. Simple, yet crisp. I pushed aside the urge to complicate it with deeper “conceptual elements” because I felt anything more would distract from the feeling of falling back to earth. If you like their actual album cover, or this one, either way, the album is good. Check it out.

Read my review of the album.

I appreciate comments on these album art redesign posts. They are an exercise so I try to spend as little time as possible on them. I would love any input about how you feel this compares to the actual album cover. So what do you think?

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