Designing the World My Album Lives In

And a part of creating that applies to any kind of art

I am sitting at my dining table with candles lit and a hot tea beside me. It is a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, thunder is rolling in, squirrels are plowing through puddles, vines are growing rapidly up my trees, and the sky is mysteriously dark as bad weather is approaching. It feels like the perfect time to write this post. I am in my own world just for a moment and thank God.

I have been working on my 12-song album for a couple of years now. I am so excited to announce that she is finally finished and I’m now on the release “planning” side of things! Before my next single drops, I wanted to share some insight into how I created the imagery and built the world where my project lives.

I say ~world~ because I’ve always been connected and inspired by artists and designers who represent their art this way. When I sit down to plan anything I am creating (whether it’s florals, brand or event design, or my music) I usually take time to create mood boards or pull my work naturally from something I feel inclined to design. It allows me to stay focused on the end result and I can escape to a place of my own while in the creative process.

That is one of the many reasons I love making music. I feel the most confident in glueing myself to the joy this process brings me. It is what gives me the drive to keep creating and it feels like another version of therapy.

For this album, a theme started to unfold as I imagined myself in a specific place while writing. Some songs played out differently in my mind and were written in co-writes, but overall I kept coming back to myself there. Overall, the lyrics are telling a story and sharing my heart, but also reflecting a place that is full of imagery and different meanings can be implied to the listener.

Without sharing the title of my project just yet, I want to share more details about the process of creating everything beyond the music.

Whether you’re creating an album or anything vulnerably special to you, these are questions you might ask yourself in the process:

1. How do you translate your sound or art into imagery?

2. How do you design a photoshoot or a launch that feels like a full body of work, not just a collection of pictures?

3. How can you fully connect to your art and how do you represent yourself through it?

Here i’ll share more about my personal process.

Translating My Sound Into Imagery

I often think through the lens of these questions…

What colors do I feel throughout the album? Is the song telling a more specific story or is it vague? Is weather or seasons a factor? What images come to mind as I listen to the music? Where do I place myself when I imagine these songs? What emotions do I express? Are there key words or phrases representing the project?

This part of the process feels more important to me rather than collecting a bunch of images to dump at once. Using color, lighting, styling, and an overall theme to create a direction is a helpful part of that process. I want it to feel thoughtful, but also natural.

I knew early on I wanted this record to be focused around a garden. I wanted a particular kind of garden though. Not a bright, cute, sunny, cows, countryside in the Cotswolds, strawberries, and herbs kind of garden. I eat that up, but this album does not feel like that at all.

I wanted a dark, mossy, wet, glimmer of sun through the trees, lying in the dirt, blood red and expressive pink roses dripping water from their petals, snails, twisted trunks, blacks and deep greens, misty grays and blues, hedge-cut bushes. An Alice in Wonderland kind of garden. A secret garden. A period piece. A novel, but not as elegant, maybe a little more medieval. I imagined myself in a large maze majority of the time. Lost, but also knowing exactly where I was. I imagined a large wall I couldn’t see over. A door I couldn’t get through. I saw trees with vines suffocating their trunks. At times, I was stuck in between those vines and the trunks.

So what you are imagining with me now is a difficult world to pull off with a really small budget. It can be done, but in a perfect world I imagined myself shooting everything in Prague or even the countryside of Berlin with a massive budget. Like ideally I am in a giant maze and there are red apples and climbing roses everywhere in sight. I get to build the biggest installation of my life and I have an unlimited clothing budget. But, no excuses. There is always a way even if it isn’t the most top tier version of what I would imagine doing for this project. I never regret trying to push myself to find something that represents what I am trying to build. And ultimately, it can be fun and full of passion regardless.

Building Mood Boards With Intention

For some odd reason, it rained most of the days I spent in the studio. I worked across different seasons of cold, wintery days and warmer days where rain covered the grass and the trees. I spent a lot of sad days and light happy days in the studio and could fully forget about life most of the time. The studio itself was moody, with a very small amount of natural light. Vines grew outside the studio walls, and that atmosphere played a larger role in the process without even trying to.

I made mood board collages early in the project. I began collecting ideas and writing down thoughts in my notes app anytime they came to mind. I think it is all about collecting at that stage. Most thoughts, even if they feel stupid later, are worth writing down. After writing the first two songs. I made mood boards on my phone and in my journal. I started to look around me while traveling and took notes of things that caught my attention.

I found myself using Pinterest for most of my mood boards, but I also found so much inspiration from travel, buildings, movies, books, clothing, magazines, and more. There is a lot of inspiration on this platform, kind of like Tumblr, which I’ve been really drawn to about it lately. It is a place where all of my art can live.

This process not only inspires my songwriting, but it helps shape my thoughts and decisions on the production side. I am not a producer by trade, but I know what I want to hear. Starting this early gave me a sense of clarity and confidence for the sound and it helped me lean into the project musically with my friend and producer, Asher.

Here are just a few of the many boards I created throughout the process.

Bringing A Vision To Life

To make the final album shoot possible, I created a clear list of things I needed to accomplish:

Designing A Deck. I usually open up a Pages doc or Canva doc on my computer and start organizing and laying out all of my mood boards, saved photos, lists, ideas, and details I have collected over time. I do this for multiple things in my life, not just music. Florals, table scapes, home design, and more. It is so helpful to work off of and it gets the gears turning.

I made sure there was plenty of inspo and details to show the photographer and anyone involved in the shoot. I edited the rough deck after the photographer, locations, and details were all locked in. I added a timeline of the shoot day, descriptions of designs, addresses for locations, and whatever else in hopes of a smooth and successful day.

Choosing The Locations. I had to get creative with my set locations for this shoot. I chose our backyard because it is covered with greenery and it’s easy to do whatever you want on the property without stress. The second location was at a past client of mine’s greenhouse. They had a beautiful outdoor iron lounge chair with green padding, and Erick, the photographer, was able to make the lighting feel a little ethereal and moody for the shoot. We ended the shoot at a studio space, where we were able to lock a couple more set design options to complete everything.

Designing The Set. I gathered inspo throughout the course of creating the album. I was getting really familiar with moss for some design projects I was doing and kind of became fascinated with all of the objects you can cover with it. I started the first release by covering a chair in moss, so I felt inspired to incorporate more moss into the final shoot. I wasn’t expecting to do that, but decided to create a moss covered table setting. I wanted to be the only person at the table, but with several place settings. There is something to say there, and it fits with the album. I designed the set in my backyard for the first location, then recreated it in a studio space later. I pre-ordered items and ran errands all over town in advance so everything would run smoothly on the shoot day.

Picking Out Outfits. I typically save a lot of ideas throughout my camera roll from watching movies, scrolling Pinterest, Substack, runway, and clothing drops over the course of creating the project. Once it is time to nail down clothing, I grab everything I have saved or have been inspired by recently and add it to its own collage to see what makes sense. I go to my own closet first, I thrift second, and as a last result I shop a few pieces online to create the look. I honestly try to put less pressure on this part. I went more DIY, thrift with my choices for this particular shoot.

Landing A Photographer. Choosing a photographer is so important, but I prefer to reach out once I have the full picture. I want to show them the music, my design deck, my location ideas, a list of people involved, etc. I want them to see it before they commit to the project. From there, I am always open to their creative direction or location preferences, of course. It is nice to find someone you can trust, and whose work you admire. In my situation, I also needed to find someone who was willing to work within my realistic budget. I actually got way too lucky with this and I am so grateful!

Locking In A Team. In my case, it is up to myself to take charge and make things happen. I usually do my own makeup, hair, and clothing because I prefer that. But in some cases, I have stylist friends help me with outfits to make things stress-free. I also like having someone there to do iPhone BTS and, if possible, having a videographer there to kill two birds with one stone. I am grateful my husband edits video footage so well, and a lot of my friends are so talented with their style and design eyes. For this shoot, a lot of my friends were out of town or working, so I got it done and Troy helped me a lot on the day of the shoot.

Representing Myself Through My Art

I don’t believe that every piece of art or project that you are a part of has to have pressure to be really thought out. Some ideas might just happen easily, some might feel like you have to inspire yourself a little extra to get through it.

I think it is normal to tap into a different version of yourself, or maybe even your artist has a specific person you become when you are in artist mode. Maybe the entire album is a story that is unrelated to yourself. Either way, it is something you are creating, so you are probably connected to it somehow.

I had a lot of negative emotions about myself as an artist before reading The Artist’s Way and really leaning into my strengths as an artist. I will be 31 years old in May and have always pursued my passion for music, but didn’t fully find confidence in my strengths. I wouldn’t change it, because I know that this particular album needed to come out of this particular place in my life right now. My current experiences and my current way of thinking play a huge role in this entire project. It is the right time and that leaves me feeling inspired no matter what my day-to-day looks like.

I truly feel like this album represents who I am. It is not only a mixture of my favorite genres of music, but it is wrapped around a world that the design side of my brain lives in on a daily basis. I see a lot of things through the same lens and it felt natural and fun to bring this to life. I hope this inspires you to create something you love.

Whatever you create from your ideas, inspiration, vision, or talent is unique to you and that is what makes you special.

Love,

Abby Jane x