Tray Card Updates

A few tiny tweaks to the tray card. As per my last post, I thickened up the song list text, and also offset the drop shadow a tiny bit. Just to make it more legible. I also re-did the grit filter, making a few changes to it so that it's a bit more unique. On a technical aside, I also resized it to properly fit the template. Previously it was just haphazardly placed on the template, with a few inches of bleed on one side. It's a little bit cleaner now



As with my previous comments, this is really pretty much where I want it to be, aside from final song order. I may make some tiny tweaks along the way just to make it a little cleaner, but the overall layout is right where I think it should be.

Tray Card Near Complete

Aside from final decision on song order, I believe this is just about done. I MAY thicken up the text a little on the song list. In fact, I think I will. Other than that, This is right about where I want it to be.

True Grit - Liner Notes Cont'd

A few tiny changes. I added the grit layer, which I think is cool and suits the theme of the album. I also added in a few more pictures along the bottom, and did some re-arranging. I'm sort of on the fence about some of the pics I selected, but they are all travel/adventure related. Though not necessarily desert related. I think I'm overthinking things.



Also made some minor changes to the text layout. Made the first "W" spacing a little different. Very biblical. Though not in proportion.

Liner Notes Update With Spellcheck

Here's the latest version of the liner notes. Includes a number of tiny spelling, capitalization and grammar changes. Nothing signficiant, just little clean ups. Is that even a word?

Liner Notes - This Time With Feeling

Looks like I forgot to attach the pic last time I posted about liner notes. Here it is.



And upon uploading it, I noticed a bunch of errors in the text. I will correct them.

Front Cover Art Updates

A bit more work finished on the front cover art. Added in text for our bios. The picture for ME is the final one, but Bills is temporary.



Please keep in mind for ALL of these work in progress photos that I am NOT removing the bleed. So there's additional artwork around the borders that will be chopped off after the printing process is complete.

Liner Note Thoughts

I'm sorry to say that it looks like the liner notes are going to be SEVERELY truncated in order to make them fit on the inside jacket. We wrote A LOT of text. I figure I will have to chop out about 75% of the text, just to make it fit. And that's pushing the lower limits of font size for the art work.

The GREAT news is that we can always publish the extended liner notes on the website, or on the blog. So the information will certainly not be lost. It just won't be printed on the album sleeve.

Liner Notes Polished

This is the 200th post to this blog! yay! I don't know what that even means, but I'm sure it's some kind of accomplishment.

I just finished up editing the liner notes for the album. And by "editing", i really just mean fixing grammar and typos. I didn't really make any editorial decisions, other than changing the voice in a few places. For example, the original text may have said something like "I recorded guitar on tuesday". This got changed to "Bill recorded guitar on tuesday".

I didn't introduce any new text or meaning to the narrative, just cleaned it up.

However, we wrote a LOT of stuff for the liner notes. I fear that I may have to chop some out, but that is pure speculation. I will find out more once I pour it into the artwork template. Either way, more progress has been made. My goal is to have all of the album cover artwork finished by the end of the month, pending song order.

Back Insert Almost Done

As with my previous post, this is an update on the current state of the album artwork.

This is the back page. This is includes the spine.



There's really very little different between this and some of the concept art I posted a while back. Main difference is that this was all laid out in Adobe Illustrator in high res CMYK. There's a few tiny tweaks, and the song list is not final, but this is pretty close. I'm still on the fence about whether or not to use a "dirty filter" over the entire image, just to add some sandy-grain type noise to it. i think I WILL go with it, but that will be the very last thing I do.

There's also still a little bit of work to do to make sure the text is legible. It's gotta POP! woohoo!!

Album Artwork Nearing Completion

I am done with the design of the cover artwork. Now I am just assembling it all together in a high res format with the text being left as vectors. I'm doing this in adobe illustrator. it's really just a process of recreating what I did previously in photoshop.

Here's where it stands as of this very second.



Disregard the big blue blob on the left. That's just a place holder.

Anyhow, I may do some last minute tweaks on the placement of the little photos, but as of right now, this is pretty much what it's going to look like.