THE FOREST: ALBUM COVERS
Graphic Design / Visual Storytelling / Painting / Illustration / Adobe Illustrator
The Forest is an atmospheric dark wave band created by my friends in high school. Five years later, the girl group still performs occasionally at DJ sets and at small local stages. After seeing my fine art, they asked me to create an album cover for their most recent album from early 2024, Ocean Erotica, which inspired me to continue with their concept and create further album covers reflecting their sound spanning from 2019 to present. Though Ocean Erotica was their first official album, they had other informal groupings of songs from throughout the years, and with their permission and input, I created 3 more album covers that reflected their dark, atmospheric, and slightly feminine sound.
ALBUM 1: SILENCE, 2019
The Forest's initial sound was inspired by goth bands like The Cure, where themes of death, romance, and macabre beauty met with their own experience and sound. Based on my own memory of their music from back in high school, I immediately felt a painting I had already created reflected some of the themes of life and death in their music. The painting is oil with thread-work connecting the butterflies to the spine. To mimic the doubled up threads throughout the rest of the cover, I inserted the orange border around the edge with the same color and thickness of the threads. The overall composition flowing and slightly claustrophobic, with some room to breathe and rest the eyes, reflecting the style and musicality within the songs themselves. The frame and font were also chosen as a call-back to vintage books/album covers, as serif fonts and details like frames were common elements during the 70s and 80s, when dark wave and goth music were in their prime.
ALBUM 2: CREATION, 2021
​The second album title highlights the vast amount of music and inspiration that flowed out of the band during the pandemic. Because almost all other activity ceased, this was the period in which The Forest created the most music, inspiring the dense, busy pattern for their second hypothetical album cover. To create this dark lacy texture, I experimented with adobe illustrator's pattern creation capabilities, which generated the top-most black/white image. I then traced over the pattern in photoshop to add a more sketchy, rough texture that better reflected The Forest's unpolished sound at the time. I filled the gaps between the lace with a deep forest green, calling back to their time spent in nature. The color almost leans blue (seen in the front and back cover to the right), similar to how evergreens seem blue from a distance.
ALBUM 3: NOTES FROM THE ROAD, 2022
Their third album cover reflects the stage of change we all felt after covid receded, and we all entered our busy college lives. As the members of The Forest advanced through college, the pressures of trying to reach academic and career goals could definitely be heard in their longing sound, especially as the time they could dedicate to making music dwindled. The original painting was done to reflect my own feelings about the job market and the constant pressure to succeed an unreachable goal. Thus, I felt it was perfect to incorporate into The Forest's 3rd hypothetical album cover, as it perfectly encapsulated the member's apprehensions as well.
ALBUM 4: OCEAN EROTICA, 2024
The fourth album was finished their senior year of college, and is a collection of tracks they wrote throughout university. It explores the theme of growth into adulthood through motifs of life, death, decay, and rebirth. The album also has a more melancholy tone compared to their previous work, as if mourning the end of their college chapter. I chose this colored pencil piece for the background of the album, as it seemed perfect for an album titles "Ocean Erotica," with the fish swimming through the composition. The drawing also encapsulates similar themes of life and death. The overall composition is roughly split into thirds, with two thirds of the cover containing the drawing, which is cropped to display the face and two fish. The font was chosen to harmonize with the flowing lines of the drawing, and is masked with the same textures and colors as the fish scales.