Here are two album art designs I made. The top one is for an LA/Tokyo-based DJ, Kaistar, I played with at an event here in Tokyo. After meeting, we kept up on Instagram and he really dug my artwork, so he reached out with a concept for a mixtape: he would give me the title, I would make the artwork, and then he would make the mix. I liked the idea a lot because it was a dialogue, and it allowed me quite a bit of freedom. I came up with some thumbnails (as usual) based on the title 'Not Goin Nowhere,' and we settled on the escalator idea. After digging through lots of escalator pics, I found one from a mall in Pakistan that fit the angle I wanted. Since it was a musical project, I colored the escalator steps to look like piano keys. I also did some original type work on the cover. Kaistar has this project on the back burner for now, so looking forward to seeing the final product once the CDs get printed.

The bottom album design is for a hip hop group from Oakland known as Down 2 Earth. I've known one of their MCs, Azuré, for some years now, and he reached out for artwork the last time I was in LA. A lot of my early ideas had hands grasping each other, or shaking, based off of the title 'Fairshare.' Eventually came up with this idea, somewhat tongue in cheek, and had fun drawing all the hands and figuring out a color palette. They're not your average hip hop group, so I wanted try something different with the color choices. After some back and forth, adjusting and fine tuning, I ended up with this. The release was digital, so didn't get to see a physical product, maybe next time! You can listen here: https://soundcloud.com/down2earth/sets/fair-share