On His Own - Puma Blue - Candle Label Initial Ideas and Development

I started the design process for these labels by trying to communicate the understated quiet quality of this evening life performance album, using blues and blacks to represent the dimly lit performance, but also the melancholic soft jazz style. I didn’t use particularly stylised typography because I wanted the visual language to be quiet and subdued and I didn’t want any particularly decorative type to imbue the designs with a style that didn’t match the music. Ultimately however, this led to designs that fell flat because there was no visual intrigue there was nothing particularly interesting about them. 

As another direction, I focused on the Lo-Fi aspect of the album. In music, Lo-fi means a recording process which includes errors and restrictions, its an un-polished true to life representation. Therefore I tried to represent this in the design by utilising a lo-fi analogue design style to make it look unpolished, a good point of visual research was the work of contemporary design Andrew Wetmore, who creates posters and branding that have a very analogue feel, with aesthetics that look like they’ve been spray-painted, handwritten or printed un-precisely. 

I created a design that I thought was very developed, utilising grain, type that looks like it has been printed on in blue, and a grid system that references the labels on vinyl packaging, however it was evident that the design was to loud and dynamic, especially with the use of stylised typography. The logical grid system just didn’t match the live lo-fi vibe of the album. It was clear it didn’t visually represent the album that well, so I experimented with darkening the label designs, using grain and spray-painted type to represent the lo-fi quality of the album and putting type in smaller boxes within the composition as a reference to the labels and stamps on vinyl records. 

Ultimately however, all the labels were either too loud and dynamic, and didn’t match the tone of the music, or they were too simple and just felt flat and boring. At this point I thought about the album some more and about the product - the candle. The reason I picked a candle was firstly because the album is atmospheric and ambient, something you’d listen to in an evening maybe with some candles lit. Secondly I picked a candle because I looked at the venue of the performance - Eddie’s Attic, an American venue, bar and restaurant, and like many small American venues, in front of the stage it has a cluster of lots of little round tables all with a candle on. Fundamentally, with this being a live album, the venue and location it was performed in are very important, as I previously mentioned in my research, listening to how Puma Blue interacts with the audience almost makes you feel like you’re there. I lit some candles and photographed them in a dimly lit room, and from here, came up with this geometric oval shape which mimics the light coming out of the top of the candle when looking at it from a perspective. The final design, which has a black background, displays these ovals decreasing in size, mimicking how these candles would look in the venue if you glanced at a row of tables. The type, in Benton Sans Wide, is simple and understated, meaning it represents the simplicity of the album and is suitable for a commercial product.