Four explorations of form, and one final color swap for legibility. Posters made in support of Cold Weather Company’s Summer 2022 UK Tour
A trio of tall posters promoting Cold Weather Company’s Summer 2022 UK Tour
For their final single before the release of their latest album, Find Light, Cold Weather Company sought a peaceful image that matched the stripped-down style of the song. I used a photo I took of the Southern Mountain in Acadia National Park for the background, and added the birds from photos I took on Cadillac Mountain. The birds fly to the right, which, according to myth, signifies something good is coming.
"Reclamation" is the third single from Cold Weather Company's upcoming third album. It's an intensely personal song for me, so I did my best to fill the song art with as much meaning as I could. The image is a photoshop composite with a photo taken with a Mavic Air drone as the background. The song is about two close encounters I had with death--one on this lake, when I fell through the ice, and the other when my car collided with a telephone pole. The island is the focal point, as it was the beacon of hope I worked toward to try to pull myself out of the frozen lake. Two pictures I took that day (now four years ago) have been worked into the final art--one of a sunset, and the other of the ice. My crashed car can be seen as a ghostly image on the water in the lower middle of the picture. To give these layers meaning to others beyond myself, the band has been sharing the story behind the song on their social media sites.
For Find Light, we wanted to stray from the expected, both sonically and conceptually. Our first studio album, Find Light is our debut as a fully-realized band. We wanted an image that was eye-catching, but more than met the eye, so we decided on a photo I took with my Mavic Air drone last year in Ogunquit, Maine. Rather than “finding light” in the sun or the sky, the cover art is a bird’s eye view of waves crashing against rocky shores. Out of this chaos, seafoam gleams in sunlight—almost to spite the violence forces churning below. Light can be found where you least expect it—sometimes you just need to change your perspective.
A huge thanks to Pat Noon at EightSixteen Studios, Alan Douches at WestWestSide Music, and all of our friends who lent us their talent!
Seeking to maintain graphic consistency between albums, the artwork for A Folded Letter (2016) was driven largely by that of Somewhere New. I sought to improve the legibility of the text, opting for a new body font with a sleeker, bolder appearance.
Release Date: December 14, 2016
Colton was looking for something that felt both personal and natural for his new album, Place to Settle (2016). To achieve this, I made sure to take a series of honest photos during our shoot, choosing the best images that matched the sound of the music for the album art. The typewriter-style font was a favorite of Colton's, as it reminds the reader of an old letter sent to an old friend.
Rose Boulevard was looking for a natural vibe for their EP, Ricketts Wood (2015). I took the photos for the album on one of my favorite hiking trails, where I believed their music had its place. I followed the same idea when making the cover photo for their release show to maintain graphic consistency.
Karma Gambit, a New Jersey indie rock band led by Jack Linden, worked with graphic artist Joe Ruff for their cover art. To unify the design, and drive the concept of the art throughout the CD case, I placed elements of the hand-drawn art throughout the jacket. Emphasis is clearly given to the lyrics on the inside of the case, surrounding an image of Jack from our photo shoot.
With his EP, Roots (2015), Tyler Rousseau wanted to play on the idea of origins. To create a visual from this concept, we decided to place his antique guitar in the trunk of a decaying tree, illustrating the relationship between the roots (the tree), and the fruit (the guitar). One tree may decay in the forest, while another is crafted into an instrument--in the end, the roots all began the same.
This series of posters for Cold Weather Company's 2017 tour worked off of the album art for the band's second album, A Folded Letter. I sought for a clear hierarchy in terms of text, emphasizing the most important information.
Each show on the tour had its own event page photos and posters, all matching the overall graphic tone of the album artwork for maximum graphic consistency.
For their first album, Somewhere New (2014), Cold Weather Company wanted to create a grand visual. Taking a photo from one of my trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and contrasting it with a mountain sunset on the inside cover, I sought to visually explain the dynamics of this environment. The band's sound is rich with harmonies and acoustic instrumentation, making this natural approach very fitting. Featured in the middle of the inside cover is a character the band created, the Fellow in the North, whose image is based on a 19th century etching found in an antique book of poetry. The album is loosely based on this character, so his appearance in the artwork felt critical.
Cold Weather Company's "Clover" is a song that examines the facets of a relationship on it's last legs. For the artwork, vocalist/pianist Steve Shimchick sent me a photo he took on a trip to New York City's Central Park, where some of the content in the song took place. In photoshop, I eliminated some of the original photo's unsightly details and added a slight black and white gradient to further reinforce the concept of the song.
For Cold Weather Company's first release of 2018, "Old but True", I sought to continue the multi-faceted concept of their previous single, "Clover". I extensively edited a few photos together from the band's recent residency in Southwest Harbor, Maine to create an otherworldly image showing multiple paths all leading to the unknown--a clear metaphor for life, and a graphic explanation of the song's concept.
Cold Weather Company's 2016 "Bluebird to Blue Ridge Tour" put the band's vintage blue school bus, "Bluebird" front and center. It was the band's first extensive tour in the bus, and aptly enough, the trip's southern extent was in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I took the photo of the bus, as well as a quick promotional video.
Because each song on Cold Weather Company's A Folded Letter tells its own story, I decided to give each song its own cover art on the band's website. I took all but two of the photos with the songs in mind, editing them with a minimalistic, visual-first approach. The photo for "From Rest" was taken by vocalist/pianist Steve Shimchick, and the photo for "Gettysburg" was taken with a 19th century camera at a Victorian Photography Studio during the band's tour through Gettysburg in 2016.
As with A Folded Letter, I also created individual song art for the tracks on Cold Weather Company's debut album, Somewhere New. Each photo was taken to suit each song and then edited with minimal text to reinforce the importance of the image.
“Way Up” was our first release (August 16th, 2019) since our third album, Find Light. The song follows the same themes as the album, albeit from a brighter, more optimistic tone. The artwork is actually the ground view of the cove seen in the Find Light artwork!