Ties is a five-piece band playing post-hardcore tunes in the style of bands like Thrice, Hopesfall, and Thursday. Their first studio release needed a cover that expressed a level of authenticity and a message of Departure. Full disclosure: I play guitar in this band.
Ties maintains an authentic vibe with minimal effects and polish in its production—whether musical or visual. From the start of the project I was interested in finding a way to make the album art seem tactile to make it seem more grounded, more "real."
The album's themes centered around change—making, surviving, and growing through drastic change. We titled the album "Departure" for this reason.
For storytelling, I find linework to be very useful. At first I worked with pen and ink, thinking that the imperfections in pen strokes would yield the authentic feel we were looking for.
Although the expression of more fluid shapes was appealing, they didn't seem to clearly tell the story of "departure;" there was no definite "break point," no actual point of departure. It was also a little too harmonious for our music and message. I tried again with much more angular lines, and let them intersect at different lengths and angles, for more tangled and chaotic appearance.
I realized I could make this design using a needle and thread and kept that in mind as I completed the lines. Incorporating type would still be more practical digitally however, and I would need a template anyway.
After printing the template and pasting it on foam core, I traced the art with thick bookbinding thread—somewhat coarse fiber that had plenty of dimension to it.
It was slow going. It took me many evenings to complete the threadwork. Ultimately, though, it was a much more satisfying piece than it would have been if it had been an entirely digital creation.
