Sene - Anywhere But Here - Root 70 Lounge Digital

I've been doing some artwork for my Japanese friend, Naoyuki Ebihara's Root 70 Lounge Digital label that he is launching very soon on King Beat and iTunes with the new album by Sene. I met Nao when I taught him English in Manchester for a while and we ended up going to nights like Eyes Down and the Electric Chair together. We also went to see Fat Freddy's Drop play at the Academy and Nao danced his socks off, as did I, to the Aotearoans roots jazzed up soulful funk (crap description, I know but it's pretty much how they sound). Anyway he has since moved back to Japan and gotten involved with releasing records by Himuki and has now taken the plunge and started his own label.



Nao and myself at the Last Rites BBQ at the Sally in Hulme, Manchester.

I thought I'd just share with you a bit of the design process. There wasn't much of a budget and we had a very short time-table in which to work.

This was my initial idea for the front.



And the back. This is just a sketch and I was going to tighten it up a bit later in the process but the idea was rejected.



We then discussed this and decided to make it more 'street and jazzy', so I sent through this idea for the front. I must point out that one of the challenges of this brief was to make every bit of writing legible for people playing the tunes in iTunes - Nao isn't doing any CDs or 12"s at all.



Then it was pointed out that it was a solo album, so it was back to the drawing board. I didn't really like this design in all truth. Now the next challenge was using pictures that were 2cm x 3cm with a dpi of 65, I kid you not. This is what I came up with for the front.



And the back...



It's intended to be, ahem, seen like this.



Sene didn't like the font choices and he wanted me to use a different picture, so we ended up with it looking this this. I'm not a great fan of the font chosen but then again when you're working for someone else you don't really have the final say. I also had to give the boombox with the wings a more drawn kind of feel. Here is the front.



And the back...



And the whole shebang.



In the end it came out fairly well and Nao and Sene were both happy with it.

The album gets released on iTunes at the beginning of January.
And as of last night it is currently available from King Beat.
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