Jazz Album Artwork Concepts
Music Branding Explorations
A collection of conceptual designs that explore visual identity for jazz music and how classic albums can be visually reimagined for both digital and physical formats. Includes a streaming thumbnail concept for Miles Davis' studio album, Kind of Blue, alongside a vinyl cover concept for Ella Fitzgerald’s Night & Day album. Both designs highlight the relationship between music and visual storytelling, balancing timeless style with contemporary presentation.
"Jazz Album Thumbnail: Kind of Blue", Digital art, 1600 x 1600 px, 2022
Kind of Blue – Spotify Thumbnail
Wanting to echo the cool, serious atmosphere of Davis’s classic recording, I curated photographs of core jazz instruments and arranged them in offset squares for a sense of rhythm and movement. Each image was tinted in its own shade of blue, to create a layered different kinds of blue palette, with a slim header reading kind of blue, and a box labeled "Jazz,” a nod to classic genre packaging and playlist culture.
"Jazz Album Cover: Night & Day", Digital art, 1600 x 1600 px, 2022
Night & Day – Album Cover
Shifting from thumbnail to full album cover, I chose Ella Fitzgerald, one of my earliest jazz influences, as the subject. Drawing inspiration from vintage jazz vocals, I blended a night-to-dawn gradient (deep blue to violet to a touch of sunrise yellow) behind a black-and-white portrait of Ella gazing upward. Subtle stars and a soft glow give the piece a romantic, timeless feel while avoiding the harsh left/right day-night split found in other Night & Day covers.
Tools: Adobe Photoshop
Reflection
The project introduced me to digital compositing and confirmed how naturally my background in music informs my visual design choices. It also sparked a lasting interest in music-related artwork that I continue to explore.
