Peter Conway ‘Breakthrough’ single promo design

Continuing the brand from Chains The EP:
Peter was keen to keep the success of the first release’s (see my post on Chains The EP)  traditionally classic, legendary feel, with a modern edge – but he wasn’t so keen on appearing on the cover of this next single.

What we wanted to communicate:
We wanted a cover that was visually exciting, but not too slick – we really didn’t want this to look like a major label release – we wanted to keep it indie, a certain amount of ‘homemade’ feel to it. This was early in Peter’s career and we wanted to communicate the fact that this single was something Peter had recorded and created with people he trusted and loved – not manufactured in a huge recording studio, surrounded by clever machinery and the latest production technology.

Then we saw it!
One day sitting at Peter’s house, going over designs I saw his reel-to-reel player.
“What’s that?” I asked, “Does it work? It looks amazing!”
“Oh that..” replied Peter, “Yeah, sure it works, I recorded the first ever version of Breakthrough on it..”
!!!
So there we had it – the visual we were looking for. I had it photographed by the legendary documentary photographer Daniel Meadows (who’s beautiful black & white portraits from the 70s were used this spring on the Starsailor album ‘All The Plans‘ – and accompanying single ‘Tell Me It’s Not Over‘.).

Then I played around with the photos a bit on Photoshop and hey presto, we had our promo! It’s something you want to pick up, hold, inspect and listen to, even if you’ve not heard of the artist on the cover – the perfect combination for a promo CD.

Peter Conway ‘Chains The EP’ CD packaging design

Hello,

We just couldn’t find the right aesthetic for Peter’s first release through Decca. We’d had loads of pitches and ideas in, but just couldn’t find the right one. We needed a visual that reflected the classical nature of Peter’s voice and music – a look that firmly rooted Peter in a tradition of pure talent, soul and depth. Yet at the same time we needed to create an image that was engaging and exciting to a modern audience..

Then I looked through a whole lot more photos from a day when Peter had gone out with a mate and a camera around Conway Street…

I saw this image and knew this was the right direction to take. I turned off my phone and emails and spent far too many hours rebuilding parts of this image (brick by brick!!) to make it work as a CD cover, and hours of  fiddling around with my rudimentary Photoshop skills to make this work, but finally we have it! And I have to say, I’m really proud. I love it, Peter loves it, management love it and Decca love it – grrrreat!

(This is me taking ‘Product Management very literally!’)

Check out Peter Conway’s MySpace page here. If you ask him nicely he may even have a copy of this EP to sell you.