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 2007 mixed CD exchange, I got ambitious (or perhaps just indecisive), and made three mixes. To supplement the main mix, I made Wanderlust Vol. 2, and a mix of cover songs – a popular theme in our mix exchange.
For the “Garage/Thrash” mix I used stock photos (the front cover is a composite) to illustrate the play on words that indicate the kind of music found on this mix — garbage becomes garage, and trash becomes thrash.
I used my own original photos for “Wanderlust Vol. 2.” I really love the Travco photo I used for the cover, and how the chain link fence shadow on the mobile home suggests that it hasn’t been moved for a while. The back cover features a view from the inside of the Travco, but I swapped out the window contents with another photo, because the real life view from that window was just awful.
This “Disc-Covery-y” was the first of several cover tunes mixes I made. The front cover uses stock photo art, but the back cover is own photo from a visit to the Sun Studios in Memphis, TN, many, many moons ago.
Process: Adobe Photoshop and InDesign
Output: Full color digital printing on 80# glossy coated paper