Artwork for Murley Shertz’s New Album, Hayward

June 7, 2011

The guys from Murley Shertz approached me to design the artwork for their new album Hayward. The band wanted the album art to reflect their time spent at a lake house in Hayward, WI. They gave me a few photos to work from and mentioned a few elements to include in the design including the UFO that you see throughout the project. They wanted the color scheme of the piece to reflect sunset and dusk so I used dark blues and oranges.

The front of the album is a depiction of a man on a pier with the sunset behind the Wisconsin woods. The actual CD features the man on the pier with a UFO flying overhead. When you remove the CD from the packaging the man and the UFO are gone from the design. I wanted this to give a mysterious feel to the artwork which I think works well. It is also an element of the design that I don’t think everyone will notice the first time they open the CD.

The back of the album depicts the Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, which a small number of modern-day UFOlogists have suggested the targets were extraterrestrial spacecraft.

I incorporated hand drawn elements that I scanned in with vector artwork that I created in Adobe Illustrator to give some texture to the piece. When all was said and done I was really happy with the way that the entire album turned out. Thanks for the opportunity, Murley!