Project Brief

Design an illustration to be used for an album cover for the alternative metal band, System of a Down. The illustration should depict all four members of the band as well as pay homage to their Armenian roots as to which they are actively campaigning to bring awareness to the lack of media attention on the Armenian Genocide. The font should be consistent with what has been previously used in former album covers.

Deadline: 5 Days

Beginning my research I looked at previous album covers of the band and noticed all were vastly different from one another aside from the eerie feeling that they give off with their cryptic images.

The band, System of a Down, takes great pride in their Armenian heritage. I wanted to add elements of Armenian symbolism and imagery to the illustration, so this required further research. The Armenian cross symbolizes faith and unity while the sun represents God, warmth and light.

In my head I kept having the image of the Appetite For Destruction album cover for the band Guns N Roses and ultimately drew inspiration from it for this project.

Same process applied to the remaining three band members

Mid-design, I had the idea to add the colors of the Armenian flag to the design which are red, blue and orange. The question I had is where? I knew I would prefer to have it as a part of the background, yet making the entire background the Armenian colors would be too overwhelming and take away from the focal point of the design itself. I played around with adding a billowing flag in the back of the cross and this is what I came up with.

The project asks for a visual inclusion of all four members of the band. In order from left to right: Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, John Dolmayan, and Shavo Odadjian.

A lot of detail is required for this design so I broke it down by sections. I started by tracing over the portraits of the individual band members and applying the different shades of skin tones to emphasize light and shadow.

Constructing the Armenian cross involved a different process as I wanted to come up with an original design that was heavily influenced by the images I gathered in my research. Of course it had to resemble something of Armenian culture so I used a lot of the same floral designs and spiral elements to accomplish this. To connect it back to the metal band, I applied gradients throughout to create a metallic finish. Many existing iterations of the Armenian cross incorporate the Eternal Sun at the core of the cross. I appreciated this aspect of the original design so I stuck with it and added my own flair to it.

I felt it best to include the name of the band in the design to keep consistency with the other albums from the band. I also wanted to keep the same original font. I added a banner style logo towards the top of the illustration which initially was red, although did not fit quite right to me. I decided on the same metallic finish as the cross I designed.