It's a little bit shiny. You're also
getting a look into my private room here
which is not that exciting. You may have
seen this already it's the artwork for the
new single Bio Moroder which is out now.
You can hear for free on youtube or you
can stream it on any of your favorite
services. What I wanted to do in this
video is take a look at some of the
concepts that were created prior to us
arriving at the final artwork that
you've just seen. So what we're going to do
is have a look at five or six pieces of
concept art that will give you a bit of
an idea of how we arrived this final
version, and what happened in between. So
the artist responsible for this
particular cover is Julia Shtefan, she's a
Ukrainian calligraphy artist, she's got a
ton of cool stuff on Instagram. I'm a big
fan of this customized PS4 that
she's posted recently, definitely would
be happy to have that on my shelf. She's
got tons of cool stuff on there if
you're interested in calligraphy at all,
posting frequently so do check her out
and give her a follow. So I want to just
dive straight into the artwork concepts
here. Prior to any of this being created
me and Yulia had a quick chat about the
project. I sent her a preview of the
track, gave her a bit of a summary but my
intent with the style of the track. There
was no particular narrative intent with
this one compared to The Coming Days for
example. With this particular track it
was more about trying to attain a
certain vibe and feel, borrowing somewhat
from 80s electronica as well as modern
interpretations of that such as
vaporwave and synthwave. So based on
that Julia created a handful of concepts
to help us explore some different
possible styles and I thought it'd be
cool to just go through them one by one
so you can get an idea of how we arrived
at where we did. So this is the first one.
This is actually one of my favorites. I
feel like visually it's really
representative of me. It's a silhouette
based on one of my images, featuring my
headphones of course, and I really like
the way that the Northern Introvert name
is kind of used as mask across the face.
I think it works aesthetically and also
in terms of tying in with the Northern
Introvert name in a more literal sense,
it has a really cool effect. Not only
that but the general vibe of the cover
overall I really like. The only issue
with this one and the reason why
we didn't stick with this was the
darkness essentially. It puts forward a
very dark vibe which doesn't
particularly fit with the tone of the
track in this case. However I think this
style is something that we might
continue to play with and possibly use
for different covers in future. Here you can
see an alternate version of that with
some color added, the typography cleaned
up a little bit, and the track name
removed. This was kind of a more
general-purpose exploration of that
concept. Again I think it looks really
cool, really atmospheric, not sure where
we're going to use this yet but I'm sure
it's going to come into play and you'll
see it again in future. So this is another
unique concept here. I really like this
one, for me with this silhouette,
immediately as soon as you see the
character there's a lot more emotion
portrayed just through the shapes
alone. You can almost see the posture of
the person, with the eye I closed, the
expression on the face, it's kind of got
a sad feeling and I think it
communicates that really well and works
really well with the lettering style
here too. Again similarly to the previous
images, there was just a little bit of a
mismatch here between the tone of the
image and the tone of the track. As always
with concept arts none of this will
really go to waste,
the two key concepts to that being that
the initial concepts themselves helped
lead us towards the final version and
also the ideas that we don't necessarily
take forward on this project could well
be expanded on an altered for different
projects in future. So there's a couple
of variations of that version, here's one of
them with a bit of background detail
added, more emphasis put on the overall
silhouette with the intent of creating
space with the track name at the bottom.
And then another one which I think was
the closest of the three in this
particular example due to the coloring
and that kind of neon feel that does
provide a direct connection with that
80s vibe in the track. Here's one of the
lettering concepts that she did. This was
one of the closer ones I think in terms
of the typography, a very early example
just to explore some typography options.
The Bio Moroder text here I think does
come very close to representing the
track, kind of got that eighties Vice
City neon style. We didn't end up
pushing this one any further but it was
definitely worth exploring. Another one
here purely intended to explore
typography Styles. Love the texture of
this one, the handwritten style of Bio
Moroder is quite reminiscent of the final
cover that we did go with, however this
particular style and the texture you can
see on there did not carry through to
the final version. Similarly with the
Northern Introvert name here I think
that could work really well on a future
cover but for this particular one it
just wasn't quite right. And this was an
expansion of a previous concept Julia
had done for me a couple of months ago.
Absolutely loved the typography here,
maybe starting to repeat myself a bit
now but a similar issue here in that the
typography just wasn't quite the right
fit in this case for this particular
track. And that's when we get to the
final version. So I think you can see the
connection here between the first
version and the final version. What we've
done is we've kept the silhouette with
the headphones, the typography across the
face kind of acting as a bit of a mask,
the track name sits below and what she
has done here is obviously add a lot
more detail into the backdrop especially
so we've got that kind of neon colo,
kind of scratch tape effect. It is an
homage to eighties electronica with that
color scheme.
The lettering had a bit of work done to it
again to expand on that, add a bit of
extra texture on color, and what I think
we've ended up with here is a good
mixture which has, similar to the track
itself, some very clear nods to specific
genres of music and of course visually
we're talking about eras as well in
history, but also infusing some modern
styles
as well. And that's for the most part how
we arrived there from the beginning. I've
recently posted all these concepts on
Instagram and Facebook so if you wanna
have a closer look at some of the
individual covers that we didn't pick
you'll be able to find them there. And I
think that's everything.
So the single's out now, it's called Bio
Moroder, you can listen to it for free
on YouTube or you can stream on Spotify,
Apple music, anywhere you like essentially.
Really hope you're enjoying it, always
down for hearing feedback so do get in
touch, and thank you for watching.
[Music]
