Case Study: Designing A Cover Art For An African Song

Hello Dotters!!!

I’m William Takor and this is my first post on the site!!! *queue claps, cheers and popping champagne bottles*. LOL

Okay okay okay let me hop right in.

More than ever, African artistes are conscious about how they want their brands to be communicated. How they want their audience to perceive them and the music they make or whatever art they create.

I can tell you best because I happen to run a small Cameroonian record label called Black Triangle Africa or BTR for short. (The name’s illuminati-ish right? Yea, long story massa; that’s for another blog post.) At BTR, because we recruited the most talented songwriters and producers of our generation, good music is really the least of our concerns. The bulk of the work comes in packaging music for the audience we’re targeting. Sonically and visually.

Yehna

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago I was approached by Nigerian Recording Artiste, Teeklef (@Teeklef) to design the cover art for a song he planned on releasing to celebrate the birth of his daughter. Cute right? I can literally hear all the ladies reading right now be like “Awwwwwn”. Same reaction I had too … but ..you know … in a real … “manly” manner of course.

A couple of brainstorming DMs and emails later, Klef and I decided it’ll be cool to go in a very minimalist direction. Partly because it’s trendy right now, but mainly because we wanted the focus to be on his little girl (Yehna).

So I decided to build around the idea of ultrasound baby scan.

The Ultrasound Scan

An ultrasound is usually a parent’s first glimpse of their baby-to-be. A parent’s first ultrasound is usually a very genuine moment, because it is kind of like the parent’s first ever communication with his/her child. It is the exact same feeling I wanted Teeklef’s audience to have on reveal of the cover art. I wanted everyone to feel like Teeklef was presenting his daughter to them, individually. So Teeklef sent me a copy of his baby’s first ever Ultrasound scan.

The GIF

From the momement Klef and I started talking about the cover, I knew I wanted to do something different. Something everyone will want to copy, beacause animated GIF covers are not popular in Africa yet. I wanted to give an arty spin to animated GIFs, especially since we wanted the cover to be minimalist.

1st Yehna Cover

click here to view the Animated Cover

I designed an animated cover art that simulated an actual ultrasound screen and stripped it down to the barest minimum. Took down all the scientific stuff you will find on a traditional ultrasound screen and even toned down the typography to let the focus remain on Yehna, the baby.

After this, I wanted to explore another idea I had. So I wandered into my comfort zone: typography.

Once again, the focus is on Yehna. I wanted to be as minimalist as possible. Focusing on the baby.

After sending both designs to him, He loved both but he had reservations about the GIF. Reservations I thought were justified. Where are of the ” iPhone generation“. A world were people consume content on diverse devices and platforms, not all these devices support animated GIFs. So obviously some won’t get to appreciate the genius in this. Hence he preferred the second.

I decided to play around the second to give it a more natural, vintage, home-made feel; still keeping it very minimalist.