FORM is a group of online creatives founded in 2018 to give artists the opportunity to showcase their work to others and raise money for charity. Their biggest event every year is called All Nighter. Hundreds of musicians work together to create music within a 24-hour deadline. The administrators curate and release the music as a collaborative album, with all proceeds going to charity. Visual artists in FORM were given the same deadline for an album cover design challenge. Before, I was drawn to FORM by All Nighter’s previous album covers, I knew I had to give it my best shot.

Ideation

I wanted to get to the core of what FORM was all about. I started looking through all the previous events like STORYBOOK and FORMZINE, trying to see the conceptual threads between them. I noticed a heavy emphasis on collaboration, storytelling, identity, and ambition. FORM was raising money for Out and Equal, who are dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ people in the workplace.

I had to work that day and early the next, so I was on an even tighter time schedule than I had planned for. I didn’t have any time for sketches. I had to get my ideas onto the screen, and fast.

Getting to work

The CDJ

I thought about the musicians and their gear, and the Pioneer CDJ came to mind. I’ve always thought that it looked iconic, with it’s many buttons, screen and prominent turntable that is instantly recognizable. It also brings along the history of DJing from the 1990s to the present. It gives the viewer an idea of the kind of music they’d be listening to!

I grabbed an image of the CDJ and got to work of making a model of it – finishing up with this:

I decided to throw up one of this year’s mascots for All Nighter: Kiki! Kiki and his counterpart Bouba were based on the kiki-bouba effect. In FORM’s Discord server, two of the admins took on the role of the mascots and interacted with the people participating in the event!

The Mixer

For the mixer, I decided to make it a more modern-looking version of an analog mixer. Analog mixers are often a lot cheaper and simpler than more expensive digital ones. It works well to imply a small bedroom production or underground performance.

I was asked to include a wallpaper image as part of my submission. The mixer wasn’t as visible as I would have liked in the album cover, so I decided to focus on it here.

The Heart

I thought about the charity and also what the FORM community provides, and thought a heart was a perfect way to communicate all of those things. I decided to have the keyboard and the mixer connect directly to the heart, to communicate the idea that the work that the musicians were doing to complete this album was in fact fueling this sense of community.

The Keyboard

After placing the mixer, the CDJ, and the heart, I thought there needed to be a little more so I added a keyboard, modeled after most standard MIDI keyboards.

So, did it get picked?

After anxiously waiting for the votes to come in, it didn’t get picked to be the final album cover. However, it was included in the Bandcamp release as extra content, and FORM listed me in the credits as well!

Overall, I think this was a really good exercise in working in Blender and coming up with something fast under pressure. I hope to give this another shot in the album cover design challenge next year.