A couple of weeks ago I received a package in the mail. I was happy to find it contained the freshly pressed Joe D’amico cd, Something In The Silence. This is one of my favorite pieces that I have done and I think part of the reason is that the illustration is different than most of my work.

(please excuse any grammar or spelling mistakes, I am writing this at 3 AM)

A large amount of my illustrations incorporate an element of humor, usually a little dark to help flesh out the concept or message. I like to illustrate the (often awkward) moments just before or after the “punchline” of an event and let the viewer’s mind fill in the blanks of what the punchline would look like. To me, that is a good way to get the viewer involved with work, to participate with it and on some level become emotionally connected with it.

For this piece, there was no element of humor, no visual sly wink to the viewer letting them in on the private joke. There was no joke. During our meeting about the album cover design, Joe stated that “Something In The Silence” would be the title and he pictured some sort of wilderness scene, maybe just after a snowfall. That was about the extent of his direction. Immediately I had this image of a moonlit night in the forest with snow covered trees, something that portrayed the feeling I used to get when I would go for late night walks just after a fresh snowfall. I loved that calm quite as if the fresh powder had somehow absorbed all sound except for the muffled crunch of my footsteps. The challenge was how do I illustrate something that visually describes that feeling?

Initially I had the idea to illustrate the two deer in the foreground, much how they are now but there would be a cabin in the woods tucked into a hillside. Light would be coming from the windows and smoke from it’s chimney and the there would be a cozy feeling about it. As I started the illustration, I began to feel as though the cabin became to much of the focal point and there wasn’t enough interest to engage the viewer. A cabin in the woods, big deal. I wanted to create something that had some visual tension, something that could be interpreted different ways but still felt complete.

I began to think about the title,”Something In The Silence” and what that meant to me when I heard it. For me, it represented the brief moments of clarity that I sometimes get in the midst of the chaotic drama of my everyday life and those moments usually come in the wee hours of the morning. I started to draw the deer, I had them basically with their heads down grazing on a small patch of grass exposed from the snow. As I looked at the illustration, it was nice and all but not really saying anything. So I began to think about those moments before and after an event and what I could do to engage the viewer. By drawing the deer looking up and at something not seen, I found that visual tension that I was looking for. I found that moment that would engage the viewer and get their imagination to participate with the piece. What were the deer reacting to? Was it a threat?

Joe’s songs are acute observations on the little events that make up the complex sum of a relationship. As I thought about relationships, I began to think of how it is not always in what people say to each other that is important but it is the things not said that is most telling. For me I think the image of the deer could be them reacting to a perceived sound, something that they think they hear but might not actually be real. It is this vagueness in the illustration that solidified the concept.

The actual composition of the design was my tribute to the fantastic LP covers from the mid 1950’s, specially the cover put out by Roost Records. I wanted the look and feel of the artwork to have a true vintage feel and not the fake under-developed “retro” designs that alot of designers are producing today because they think it would “look cool”. I decided on the vintage feel because I felt it best visually described that moment and feeling of begin swallowed up in the silence of a late night snowfall. To me that is a classic feeling so it felt right to marry it to a classic period of design.

I recently just screen printed the posters for Joe’s cd release party. You can see it here.