AM Shanley - “American Vanilla”
First working with AM Shanley in 2017 on his album “Metal Alligator”, I was asked to collaborate again on his latest release “American Vanilla” (released on Subjangle, 2025).
I wish I could talk at ridiculous, self regarding, navel gazing length about how much pain and strife went into creating the cover for American Vanilla, but it really came down to a serendipitous mix of “really striking image” and “really trusting client” (maybe “really good designer” too) – I knew when I saw the original photograph that I needed to deface it with crayons, as any good designer would.
A few options were kicked around, but ultimately the yellow version won, which was handy because we needed a second colour to actually brand the album, and yellow is my favourite colour.
Creating the interior of the digipak was the main highlight for me – leaning into the medium, using the album logo on 2 planes and lining them up just right feels like it scratches an itch in my brain (sorry for the visual), and really focusing on the branding of the piece, creating new visuals to compliment the original photograph. Eventually the hardest part of the process in this case ended up being research, specifically trying to find any pictures of the actual original werewolf mask – it sounds daft, but I may have spent a full afternoon trying to hunt down that werewolf mask.
This is the privilege of being a graphic designer, because no one in any other job gets to write that sentence down without sounding like a complete freak, maybe I still do, but you read it anyway so we’re in this together.
Some bonus material! Roughly cobbled together low-quality photos of our first collaboration!