Project Type
Visual identity system, packaging design, apparel design, exhibition design, and experimental photography.
​
Role
Art direction, original photography, photo editing, branding, logo design, typography system, illustration, motion graphics, and production. All photography is original unless otherwise stated in the captions.
​
Programs Used
Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, Adobe Express, and FigJam.
​
Deliverables
Gatefold vinyl with splatter vinyl and 2 side center labels, CD with lyric booklet, Apple Music motion integration, embroidered hat, 2 candles, brass lighter, thong, string bikini, vinyl slip mat, and tote bag.
​
Gallery
This project was on display at Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, Cal State LA.
Credits aND Role
Project Brief
An independent senior capstone project building a complete visual identity system for Weyes Blood's 2022 album And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, spanning packaging, streaming, and merchandise, constructed entirely from original photography and symbolic research with no photographs of the artist.
World and Context
Weyes Blood is a Los Angeles-based art pop musician and self-defined nostalgic futurist whose work sits at the intersection of baroque folk, humanist philosophy, and apocalyptic romanticism. Her music is hypnotic and cinematic, carrying a surrealist devotional quality unlike anything else in contemporary music. Her brand is deeply rooted in analog technology and physical media, cultivating a fan culture that treats her records, merchandise, and ephemera as sacred relics. Her concerts feel like ethereal spiritual gatherings, and her music an exploration of the depths of the human experience.
Weyes Blood in a promotional image for And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. Photographed by Neil Krug.
Problem and Opportunity
And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow moves outward from the self, toward collective grief that belongs to everyone. Released in the wake of Covid isolation, it grapples with longing and the fragile desire for connection. Its argument: a song stops being autobiography the moment someone else hears themselves in it. The original artwork located that argument in the artist's body, the glowing heart in her chest. This project removes her entirely; a record about dissolving into the collective shouldn't be anchored to one face. In her place, the world is built from landscape, flame, and symbol: images with no owner, for the listener to occupy themselves.
Solution and Rationale
The identity was built from the lyrics outward: a symbolic system drawn from mythology, astrology, and the album's own geography anchors every format, and original infrared coastline and fire-and-flower photography gives the system a visual language inseparable from the world it represents. The typeless album cover follows the lineage of Titanic Rising, trusting a single image to do what typography cannot at thumbnail scale, while the Side A and Side B vinyl labels embed sequential storytelling directly into the physical act of playing the record.
Creative Direction Rationale
Every decision traces back to the source material rather than surface aesthetics. An infrared lens is utilized because the album is about making the invisible visible. Fire-and-flower photography conceived, staged, and shot handheld by flame alone over two nights until the burning rose emerged. The typographic system runs three emotional registers: baroque ceremony, Gothic drama, and humanist clarity. The color palette sampled directly from the photography, inseparable from the world it represents.
The Final System
ALBUM COVER: VINYL FRONT JACKET
A typeless cover, apocalyptic yet beautiful. A rose burns and blooms as Weyes Blood's body and heart, fire devouring a surreal coastline: personal pain, collective feeling.
ALBUM COVER: VINYL back JACKET
A labyrinth and a knot, one wandering, one anchoring, both looping back on themselves. The labyrinth carries her disorientation; the knot glows above, connection.
VINYL DISK: SIDE A
The splatter vinyl echoes the project's ocean, flame, and floral textures, its hazy surface between smoke, water, and sand. On Side A, the flame is just catching.
VINYL DISK: SIDE B
On Side B, the rose is fully enraptured, completing the arc from spark to engulfment. Flipping the record becomes part of the design, time built into this object.
Lyric Gatefold: INNER vinyl jacket
The labyrinth frames the inner spread, making the lyrics feel discovered rather than simply read, like something found inside a maze. The symbols scattered between songs aren't decoration, as each is drawn from the lyrics beside it. The candle recalls "kerosene lamps in the woods" from Grapevine, the Snake Gemini Knot is Twin Flame's volatile shadow, the Ferris wheel is Hearts Aglow's pier.
CD jewel case front & color disc face
The jewel case front carries the burning rose from the cover; its disc face shows a vivid blood moon, saturated and volcanic, the whole album's burning heartbeat.
CD jewel case back & monochrome disc reverse
The jewel case back carries the same elements from the vinyl but rearranged. The disc's reverse shows the same moon, now monochrome, cold, geological, and starker.
cd lyric booklet
The 12-page CD lyric booklet mirrors the gatefold in miniature: each song sits inside an arched window beside its symbol, unified by the labyrinth border throughout.
cd lyric booklet
A photography spread inside the lyric booklet: the coastline in black and white infrared, a quiet break between songs, echoing the vinyl's own cover art and monochrome moon disc.
STREAMING & DIGITAL: APPLE MUSIC
The animated cover brings the burning rose to life inside Apple Music's own interface, flame moving against the infrared coastline behind the album's own artwork.
STREAMING & DIGITAL: spotify
The typeless album cover placed within Spotify's own interface.
Bleeding Heart Magic Candle & Brass Lighter
A devotional set: a candle in the votive and botánica tradition, paired with a vintage engraved brass lighter, both left glowing like relics of ritual.
Hearts Aglow Turntable Slipmat
A black felt slip mat featuring the burning rose at full intensity, reduced to its most essential form, part of the ritual each time the record spins.
Emotional Cowboy Dad Hat
Drawn from Grapevine's "emotional cowboy," a coastal cowboy vibe in western script and lasso motif.
Ace of Swords Thong
The Lover's Knot sits centered on the front, sacred iconography collapsed into intimate apparel, absurd and erotic at once.
Rose of Venus Tote Bag
A black tote bag screen-printed with the Rose of Venus, its orbit echoing love as collective, everlasting; beneath it, in white type: "God Turn Me Into A Flower."
Twin Flames String Bikini
A goth girl's take on California beach culture. The Snake Gemini Knot marks the fabric, a bond connective, dangerous, sexy, slightly toxic, all at once.
Impact and Personal Statement
The project was exhibited at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery at Cal State LA as part of the 2025 senior capstone exhibition Vitruvia, where it functioned as a complete installation rather than individual portfolio pieces. This is my clearest proof that design thinking doesn't require a client brief to be rigorous. It begins with a lyric, an emotional landscape, and out emerges a symbolic world and full visual language as lush as the music itself.
