How did you get there

I was born in South Carolina, at age 3 moved to Florida and at age 10 moved to Washington Heights in New York City.

I've been drawing and painting ever since I can remember. In elementary, grade and high school I excelled in art class. I was told over and over by classmates and teachers that I should pursue art, I should be an artist. I kind of knew inside it was the direction I'd be heading, I had a real comfort for it, but I never really knew what an artist was or did.

I lacked focus in high school, I felt I wasn't learning enough and dropped out in the eleventh grade. My chances for a scholarship to two of the best art colleges in the country, The School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute went down the drain.

Looking for direction and trying to stay out of trouble, I enlisted in the Navy for 4 years and headed off to bootcamp. Boy did that wake my ass up! My first 2 years in the Navy, while stationed on an ammunition ship near Sandy Hook, N.J., I went back to high school for my diploma and also studied for a navy job as an artist. After a lot of hard work and some mandatory butt kissing, my final 2 years were spent onboard a submarine tender as a Navy Graphic Artist. I did it all in this job. I painted murals on ships, designed logos, flyers, ship and submarine menus, drew portraits of people. I was in heaven!!! On my own time I worked on artwork for a portfolio I could use to apply for admission to Art College. I was accepted at all the big art colleges and when my 4 years in the Navy were over I started school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

While going to college I made use of my art experience from the Navy and worked as a graphic designer for the USLIFE Insurance Company creating brochures for life insurance products, company flyers, logos, stationary and just about anything that came in. Between going to school full time and working almost full-time I was ready for the big leagues, something creative.

I started showing my portfolio around to see what kinds of work were available. Mitch Kanner, an Art Director at PolyGram Records, offered me work as a mechanical artist. I never planned on working for a record company but it sure seemed to be an exciting place, so I jumped at the chance.

Things You Design

In order to design something you need to figure out first what type of packaging will be needed for the job. Most record company releases are packaged in compact disc and cassette form only, to be sold in stores, there are also CD and cassette singles for sale, CD and cassette singles for promotional use, and once in a while you may still get a chance to work on a 12" album or a 12" single. There are special design CD packages, video boxes, merchandising such as posters, bincards, T-shirts, and advertising. Once photos and graphics have been created for the commercial packaging, that artwork is usually used to tie all merchandising and advertisements together so all related pieces are recognizable.

Who Do You Design For

PolyGram Records is involved in many categories of music and so there are many different types of projects to work on, Rock, Rap, Pop, R & B, Jazz, Classical, Movie Soundtracks and on and on. Within each category of music, labels are also reissuing vinyl in CD from a catalog of older music. Most of the graphic design projects are for new releases, new music by new musicians or new music by established musicians signed to a PolyGram label. Lets look at new releases since they tend to be more exciting. These new releases are usually high profile projects, the musicians are talented and well known, they have something to express. The artist and the music have potential to sell a large amount of records.

The visual direction of a job is usually worked out between the artist, the artists management, the product manager at the record label and the head Art Director of the labels art department. They summarize what the artist has to say, and who the artist is speaking to and what is the best medium to communicate it all with; photography, illustration, a collage or something else. (Lets assume photography). The record labels upper management somewhere decides how much money will be budgeted for the artwork and once that is communicated to the art department then things get going. The Art Director assigns the project to a Graphic Designer (that's me) and together they contact potential photographers, within budget of course, for their portfolios which will be presented to everyone involved to decide on who would be best to work with for the project.

A photoshoot is scheduled by the projects production coordinator. Before the shoot the Art Director, photographer and designer talk about photo ideas and goals, and of shoot locations. Usually, depending on the budget, a stylist is hired to help the artist with clothing for the shoot, and a hair and makeup person to make sure the artist looks their best. At the photoshoot everyone has an imput and bounces ideas back and forth, but most of the ideas usually come from the photographer, that's why you hired them. Photographers have a huge impact on the project. Photographers are artists that will bring a unique sense for viewing things to the project and by lighting, location, technique, pose, and experience will create an image or bring out an artists personality.

Once the film from the shoot is developed, favorite shots are chosen by the artist, Art Director and the product manager. The approved shots will be used for doing comprehensives (comps) of the cover. The goal is always to work up three as unique approaches as possible for the cover. This is where a designer really gets busy and the pressure gets pumped up, but also where the designer gets to add most to the project. You are searching for the full potential and feel of the job, should it look romantic, or rough, or fun?, you have to figure out how to make it say so. Give five designers the same image and you'll get five totally different covers back. Everyone has an individual style of working. Usually there is very little time to do cover comps so the faster you can work up ideas the more refined your comps will look. All comps are first worked up with the art director before they are shown, this way the initial focus can be on creating a piece of art. It usually works out that of the three, one comp will be the product managers main idea, one comp will be the art directors best idea, and if you're lucky, the third will be your favorite idea. There are times when all three comps turn out great and everyone is happy, it can even be difficult to pick a favorite, and then there are times when everything you work up is rejected, its always challenging, usually frustrating and usually compromising.

Most designers envision comp ideas for covers before they begin working and from there gather other art elements that will bring these visions of potential covers to life. A lot of time is spent gathering and figuring out where to gather other things to work with or in searching for potential ideas on how to approach a project. Designers are always running around gathering reference materials, books, magazines, old photographs, objects, textures, competitive releases, pretty much anything they feel strongly about working with. Sometimes it leaves you feeling like a junk man or a librarian. Competition in the design field is high, most designers keep track of what other designers are doing and follow new trends and styles, especially with the big name respected and successful designers.

Just about all the artwork you see in record stores now is created and put together on Macintosh computers. All the designers in the art department need to know at least four different software programs as well as the Macintosh operating system to get the work done. To get started, approved photos are scanned and saved into an Apple Macintosh computer. The scanned photographs are transferred through a network of computers to a designers Mac workstation where the images can then be cropped, stretched, merged, retouched, color corrected, filtered, converted, inverted and just about anything else that will enhance or help the images. All other art elements gathered, textures, shapes, lines, boxes, 3-d shapes, xeroxes, faxes, video stills, gradations, just about anything you can imagine to be used to develop the designs direction are scanned or created.

Type treatments and logos are researched, created, tweaked, colored and merged with the photographs and art elements. This point is the heart of design, you have everything you feel is needed to work with. This is where with a lot of tweaking the designer pushes each comp to its fullest potential, cropping, arranging and giving prominence to photos, elements and type. Color is important for the overall mood and legibility of the cover, color schemes are worked out and refined for the photos, elements and type. Sometimes things can get really busy and uncomfortable. Better designers seem to be able to use the best photographs at just the right cropping, introduce just the right art elements to compliment the photos, colorize all elements in the design and use just the right type treatments and sizes to round off a unique and beautiful piece of art, the cover.

Having a photoshoot and directing the creation of a cover is only one of the ways a project is started. Sometimes photographs just show up and those are what will be used, sometimes there are no images and you have to decide on a direction and research stock images that will work for the project, or many times the most appropriate direction to take is to have an illustration created. Obviously every project you work on isn't going to be amazing for various reasons, but 10% of the time, the opportunity is there to create a really great design. It can be pretty satisfying.

Designing can have some really stressful deadlines and unfortunately you always seem to be working on three different projects at once. There is never enough time. Visit your friendly art department any night of the week and you'll find designers working until 10 and 11 o'clock trying to make a job look its best before the deadline. Once the cover is approved the production of the rest of the packaging begins, and this is called doing the mechanicals. There is still a lot of designing and creativity involved in making the rest of the package interesting and having it relate to the music. It takes some real genius to fit all the copy in sometimes.

After proofreading and artist, management, label and legal approvals and endless rounds of corrections, the job is ready to go out. From there film is made, a few more corrections are made and then the job is ready to be printed.

Give your designers a little creative freedom, it gives the CD buyer a memorable experience.