The Choice Music Awards is an annual celebration of the best Irish albums. We delve a little deeper to discover the story behind the album artwork chosen by some of the contenders and its relationship to the music in question.
Sorcha Richardson talks about collaborating across the Atlantic Ocean with designer Andrew Keyser for her debut album ‘First Prize Bravery.’
“I wanted the cover to be quite simple. Before I had finished recording it, I had always imagined the cover would be black and white, but the mood of the album became a little brighter as we built the arrangements so that didn’t feel as reflective of the songs anymore. As we started putting ideas together, and making rough drafts, the thing that became most important to me was that the album title would be front and centre.
The cover is by Andrew Keyser, a really amazing designer who I’d already worked with on the single artwork for ‘Don’t Talk About It’ and ‘Honey’. We worked via a couple of transatlantic video calls because Andrew was in LA and I was mostly in Dublin so there was a lot of screenshots sent back and forth. I was in LA in August and so we met up and talked more about the album and what I wanted the cover to be. But we mostly just texted back and forth with ideas and edits.
We started out with a completely different direction for the artwork, which was much more colourful and abstract and we went through about 4 or 5 iterations of that. But then Andrew sent me this idea as an alternative option and it immediately felt more fitting so we ran with it instead.”
Words: Jack O’Higgins
