I belong to a music-related online message board, and for a period of time (until Spotify came along) we had a mixed CD exchange at Christmas time. Each participating member was paired with a secret recipient.
After the recipient received his or her mix, we would offer up the mix to anyone else who wanted one. Many of us, myself included, had fun with themes and custom covers. Many of us would often make more than one mix each year. The time and postage invested was more than worth the piles of new music we would receive in return.
For the 2009 CD mix covers, I used stock photo art for the “Glam-R-Us” mix of glam rock tunes (the front cover is a composite), and another handmade collage — this time using vintage postcards – for the “Wanderlust Vol. 4” mix.
The “Wanderlust Vol. 4” mix was dedicated to my friend Tom Wilkes, noted album cover designer from the ’60s and ’70s, who passed away that year. I used one of his posters on the back cover.
The front cover is a composite of various vintage city postcards. Buried among them are the vintage-inspired Downtown Muncie postcard I designed, and a Pappy & Harriet’s postcard from Pioneertown, CA, where we were planning to move (and did, the following year). Otherwise, all the postcards included on this cover are from cities or places mentioned in the songs included on the mix.
Process: Adobe Photoshop an dInDesign
Output: Full color digital printing on 80# glossy paper