Leading North
So today I was goofing around online because I had today off for Martin Luthor King Jr. Day. While searching, I found a random game posted on Facebook by friend, Kirsten. Its similar to the Stripper game where you give yourself a stripper name by combining your middle name with the name of the street you grew up on. For example, my stripper name is Don Lavender. My girlfriend’s would be Michelle Starglen (hers isn’t very funny). The game Kirsten posted on Facebook is where you:
- Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
- Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
When I read the game, I thought it would be a great method of creating a new album cover. My goal was to create a post today and when I found this game I thought bingo!
My random Wikipedia article was Leeds North. Its not a great article but it does have a nice sound to it. Its just the northern section of the city Leeds in England. My quote however was much more promising. The quote is by Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881):
Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.
The quote is first beautiful and inspiring. It makes me think that if I have a mission that is truly worth fighting for, nothing can stop it, even me. Its also cool because it plays with the idea of my Wikipedia article. Using “leeds north” as a direction, rather than a place, the quote could mean that no error can mess up your attempt to go north, or something like that.
Either way, for my band logo, I went with a compass theme. I wanted it to be pointing north but then I decided to tilt the logo at the end to symbolize that the band is leading north, not going north. Its like when you go on a path. Do you ever go down a straight line? Hell no! You walk around hills, pot holes, bushes, animals, whatever. Heck, depending on your center of gravity or level of toxicity, you may be unable to ever walk a straight line. That’s why you go towards north and not at north.
I then decided to make the band more on the alternative/punk side because that’s the type of music I like listening to. I bet it could be a good country band name. Don’t you think? Anyway, with the genre in mind, I tried to make a futuristic compass stamp thing. I think it turned out looking like a blend of Pirates of the Caribbean and Obey, which I’m totally fine with.
As for the album art, I wanted to make the design loosely deal with dominos. I wanted it to talk about how a single error can knock down hundreds of pieces that you may have never thought about before. Kind of like the Butterfly Effect. To do so, I made an aerial view of a spiral of dominos falling. I’m not totally happy with it but I got tired of working on it by the end. I think this three day weekend made me a little lazy.
