Caribou Records
DESIGN / BRANDING & ALBUM ART
Album Covers has been a personal project since I began Graphic Design work. I have constantly tried to take my work and make it into a cover that could be seen on a shelf one day. I wanted to create a place where my album covers could have been produced, therefore giving a brand to it. I decided to rebrand the retired Caribou Ranch Recording Studio, for which I created a new logo. I was then able to begin making a fully immersed design with graphics, titles, information, logos, and bar codes. This is something that I plan to continue in the future as I learn and grow.
Founded in Nederland, CO, Caribou Ranch Recording Studio was home to many artists for a period of time, including Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Smokey Robinson. Musicians loved the freeing feeling and calm nature of the surrounding mountains to play and record songs. During the studios recording times, they had a simple logo, show on the top left, that gave homage to the ranch. Since it's closure it 1985, the site has become a historic landmark which people can visit. The bottom left logo is the current logo for this site and can be seen on the website.
For my rebranding of this studio, I first decided to change the name slightly. After consideration and working on the project a while, I determined that Caribou Ranch Records was too much and changing it to Caribou Records made sense.
While creating the logo, I wanted to incorporate the cursive design of their new logo but change it slightly. I felt that the amount of curves was too much, so I drew out my own lettering for the C and R. The original logo for the studio played with the ranch, creating a roof over the letter. I also wanted to play with the name, but since I took out ranch, I decided to focus on Caribou and add antlers to the image.
After careful consideration, I decided to remove the rest of the lettering for Caribou Ranch, and simply have the logo be the letters C and R. I thought that this would be better for branding the albums, as it would take up less space on the back, where the information is shown, and it would allow for easier understanding and recognition. The final product can be seen on the left.
After completing the logo development, I was able to start designing album covers. I want each of the designs to have their own voice, whether they are heavy or soft. Some of the cover's I designed are in recognition of actual artists, such as Stevie Ray Vaughn, while most are fake but developed to match the imagery. The covers, shown below, focus around my use of photography, typography and overall design.
