Soundtrack to a Daydream

When I came to design the cover art for this album, I realised that I wanted it to visually sum up my artist identity in a clear way. I took inspiration from my alias, Dreamwader to depict myself knee-deep in the 'sea of dreams'.

I often associate dreams with the metaphor of the ocean, so I wanted show that here through the setting. I also decided to put my artist name in white text behind me as a bold statement of my artistic identity, for which I was inspired by the cover of Lana Del Rey's debut album, Born to Die.

Identity

I directed my mum to take the photo with my camera, using the above sketch, while we were on a camping holiday on the Atlantic coast of France. I particularly liked the way the waves broke on an underwater reef by the beach, so I chose that spot.

For the styling, I wanted to echo the ocean/dreams imagery so I wore a shirt with underwater fish printed on it (which used to be my grandfather's), some linen trousers that I'd tie-dyed blue a few years before, and a cap that I had worn in many pictures previously for the project (making it a returning motif). I also left my hair and moustache long from my time living abroad, to help represent my identity as an explorer/wanderer.

Direction

Styling

To create the effect of my artist name appearing behind my head using the limited tools I had, I made a copy of the image into a silhouette which I then overlaid on my logo, to "cut" out the right shape, then this version of my logo I overlaid onto the original photo, taking care to line it up correctly (I was using a free iphone app for this).

Dreamwader

I then edited the image to bring out the colours of the sea and, returning to the idea in my original sketch, brainstormed some ideas for how to include the album title.

However after mocking up some designs, I decided that the version without it had the most impact, as the extra information distracted from the bold simplicity of the main concept.

Simplicity