SR Designs
Sabrina Rayner
Album packaging and merchandise

The Light & the Glass

Concept packaging for a song by Coheed and Cambria, ART 265: Design Studio I

A personal, non-commercial project built around Coheed and Cambria’s song The Light & the Glass, which helped me through a difficult stretch as I was entering the real world. The brief was to create a visual representation of how the song you chose made you feel. The assignment did not allow use of any direct imagery mentioned in the song. Imagery had to be conjured using icons, indexes, and symbols to make a meaningful digipak and CD album artwork for the song’s emotional impact.

I drew the line art and handwriting in ArtStudio Pro, then combined it with photography using layer masks in Photoshop, and moved the writing around until the leading between each line was placed where it made the most sense, visually.

Mockup: open black digipak with a hand reaching from dark water, a disc with two red figures, and a red booklet with a cracked hand.
Outside Digipak, disc and booklet cover.
Mockup: inside of the packaging with a figure on a cliff edge, the disc in its tray, and a booklet spread with handwritten lyrics over red smoke and a night sky.
Inside Disc tray and booklet spread.

Visual index

The hand is a need for help, two figures merging is falling in love, red is anger, the cliff is risk-taking, the starry spiral is being pulled in, open space is insignificance, the ocean is loss, smoke and fire is turmoil, and cracked earth is being depleted.

Merchandise

Mockup: black t-shirt with a small white handwritten lyric and the merging-figures line drawing across the chest.
T-shirt
Mockup: two pin-back buttons, one showing the merging figures in red with handwritten lyrics.
Buttons
Mockup: red and black mug with the white line drawing of a figure standing at the edge of a cliff.
Mug

Process

Thumbnails and notes

Thumbnails for each emotion, notes from a feedback meeting (play with rhythm, break out of the format, keep it personal), and early t-shirt, mug and button layouts. Photo references from Pexels.

Sketchbook page: thumbnails of hearts and daggers, a reaching hand, and a circular disc design with two merging figures and lettering studies. Sketchbook page: thumbnails of a lighthouse, heart, reaching hand and a figure on a cliff, with feedback notes and a written reflection. Sketchbook page: thumbnails of hands and merging figures, front and back t-shirt layouts, and three mug layouts.