Dreamland
Album Visual System Redesign
Exhibited in Ligature 30— Awarded People's Choice
Dreamland is COIN’s third album about living in the present and enjoying the moment. I based my design on how the band described the process of making this album: “a patchwork quilt of everywhere we’ve been.” To conceptualize this idea, I symbolized each song into an object to include onto the cover art using collage and drawing, representing the idea of unifying many separate memories into one place like in a photo album or journal.
Concept
The process of making Dreamland was important to the Nashville- based band since many changes occurred between this album and their previous one. COIN decided to create their own individual label called the Committee of Sound & Mind, and their bassist left, leaving them with three band members. Writing each song was a different experience, and I wanted to represent each track with an item on the album cover. I generated symbolism using information from interviews, lyrics, and feelings I felt when listening to the songs. The separate elements were then combined with collage, drawing inspiration from bullet journaling, since my idea was to represent the album as a record of the band's journey in the making of Dreamland.
Initial Sketches of Band Members
Vinyl Sleeve
A muted, yet colorful, color scheme was used to capture the feelings someone experiences in "Dreamland." Many songs felt nostalgic to me, so I wanted to use muted colors, but using contrasting colors to represent the "certain uncertainty" of the future. This combination of past and present was a way to convey "living in the moment."
On the front cover, each symbol representing a song is scattered around a room with the band members to show Dreamland's concept—living in the present, and "realizing that there is a nice view all around you."
For the back cover, the window from the front is used to connect the atmosphere. The back is more simple to contrast the front, and it allows for the track listing to be listed clearly.
“Dreamland is about certain uncertainty & loving something so much that you can't live without it. We spend so much time existing above ourselves, trying to strategize the best way to tell our story, without simply living the “story”. We spend so much time climbing a ladder, looking up, without realizing there is a nice view all around you.”
— Chase Lawrence, COIN
Lyric Book
The visual system used in the album cover was applied to lyric book. Using the collage aspect from the album cover, each song symbol was "ripped" from the cover to pair with the lyrics.
Sample Song Symbols
Cemetery
In COIN's previous album, How Will You Know If You Never Try, a tombstone was a main element in the cover. I thought it would be cool easter egg for fans of COIN, as well as representing the lyrics "He is the richest man in the cemetery."
Heaven Hearted
This song has a lot of repeated verses of "Tell me if it's real" with various distorted sounds. The repetition and background sounds reminded me of a cassette tape that has broken when being rewinded.
Let It All Out (10:05)
1005 is a number that comes up a lot in COIN's lead singer's life and he takes it as a sign to be more present. 1005 has become a number that's important to the band and their fanbase.
Venue Posters
Spotify
