Ladysoal T-shirt Ideas

I was asked to come up with a t-shirt design/logo for the band Ladysoal (the same band I designed the album cover for).  The design had to be simple and only use two colors.  And it had to have an afro in it.

....But then I found out that Sharika's (the singer's) face couldn't be on it, but the afro still had to be present because it's signature (because Sharika has an afro).

So I made this one, but I don't think it looks nearly as good.  Sharika's face from the first picture has a way better expression, and her face just fits the 'fro better.  So then I went through with an unoriginal idea because I felt the guidelines I was given left me no choice.

I don't like this nearly as much.  I think it's missing some flavor or feeling; it just looks plain or bland.  But other people like it so we'll probably just go with this one.  I might change the font or something.  Might also try to give it some more feeling somehow.

"We Are Here" Album Covers

Awhile ago I designed some album cover ideas for the band Ladysoal.  They're from Ames and their music is kind of hard to describe, but it definitely rocks.  Anyway I've decided to post some of the drafts I came up with on here (they didn't get used).  Again, these were just ideas, not final drafts.

This is one of the first ones I came up with.  I originally had the sun in the center of the image though, and decided that wasn't interesting enough.  There's a song on the album called "Sunshine" (it's actually on there twice) and the album title is "We Are Here," so I thought this image would be a good fit.  It's a sunrise, and the three people are sort of watching it, as if they think it's fascinating and beautiful, and the sun is very important to them.  Since this is Ladysoal's first album, I thought what better image to represent it than a sunrise. (Ignore the tiny dot in the middle of the sun)

I don't really know how much I like this idea.  I thought the writing inside/around the sun would look cool, but I think I was wrong.  Plus with this idea it's almost necessary for the sun to be in the middle of the image, which I already decided wasn't interesting enough.  I liked the font, though, so it stayed.

I decided to try something simple, and made this in about a minute.  I used one of the color schemes that I found on Kuler, although I don't remember which one.  I think this idea was pretty cool, although it reminds me less of Ladysoal and more of some 1940's sci-fi propaganda poster or something.

I took the color from the sky, emphasizing only the sun, because I wanted the sun to be the main focus of the image.  I did a lot of messing around with gray developing this idea, but in the end no one seemed to like the gray and it didn't make me think of Ladysoal at all.  Besides, when the sun rises, it should fill the world with light and color, so this image basically defeats the whole purpose of using the sunrise to begin with.

I like this image a lot.  This is a gray I can live with.  I think at this point I decided to go more abstract, which is way the oranges and grays are alternating.  That's also why I kept the black lines from the last idea.  The lines don't really mean anything, but I was exploring how they would look, since I thought that without the lines the last images just looked like I failed at making gradients.  The lines looked nice, so I kept them.

I brought the blue back since it was missed, but I kept the lines and the sun's coloration.  This was the cover I think I would have used, since it made the most sense with the music and theme of the album, and was one of the nicest looking.


Anyway I had a lot of fun working in Photoshop again, even though these didn't get used.  You can check out Ladysoal at their Facebook page, or at Ladysoal.com, although I'm not sure how often that last page gets updated.  Check them out and let me know if you think my cover idea(s) were a good fit for the music.