I entered our team into an album cover design contest by the American Advertising Awards. Our team was only given a band name and a genre, the rest was up to us. We were given the band name, Wee Bonny Castles, and genre, Country.
We first developed the backstory behind the imaginary band called, Wee Bonny Castles: “The Wee Bonny Castles are a country music duo with music inspired by Kentucky’s bluegrass history and Louisville’s Irish heritage. The duo are of Irish descent and grew up in rural Kentucky, surrounded by rolling hills and horse farms.”
The design was inspired by the painting, “American Gothic,” which shows a man holding a pitchfork with his daughter outside their home in rural America. Similar to the famous painting, the country duo is holding their trade tool, a guitar, and is standing in front of their two homes; the rolling hills of Kentucky and an Irish countryside.
The whimsical font with an old country western feel gives a hint of what type of music to expect – bluegrass combined with Irish folk. We also added a halftone texture design that resembles a vintage book cover. Finally, we used Augmented Reality to make the album come to life! If you scan the QR code in the bottom corner, you can view the animation along with an original song.