www.arbelicious.com

Through my work with RUDEBOY, I got to know all the Israeli reggae & dancehall artists. In 2006 I was approached by CHOOLU to design his new single cover. Choolu is one of the founders of hiphop & reggae in Israel and I felt a great honor to work closely with him. the single was called “Boi Habaita”  (Hebrew for “Come back home”).  The idea was to do something a bit melancholy with just a touch of color. I took the picture at home myself and worked on it with Photoshop and Flash. I really like the outcome. The single was sent to all radio stations, DJs & promoters.

here is the cover: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that after that, Choolu was happy because he asked me to do the cover for the full album too.

The full album’s name was “Tavlin Yashan” (Hebrew for “Old Spice”). Our idea with this was to build Choolu  as product, as a brand name, so I started with the logo. for the logo, I took the way Choolu sings onstage and i made an icon out of it. this here is the “clean version:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used the same cap as the one on the single.

from there the way was short for the final logo that looked like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, the real worked began. The first idea was to use a lot of greens and cacti images and it was shot down after a test printing which gave us the feeling that the CD was a boxed smashed from… The second (and final) idea was to build the CD case as an old wooden spice box (after all, the album is called “Old Spice”… how didn’t i think of it first?)

The front of the CD looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you open the case this is printed on the CD itself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when you take the CD out, this is what’s printed on the see through tray underneath:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that the whole experience of working on a professional CD cover was superinteresting and fun. I learned a lot through the process and it was one of my favorite projects so far. Working close with Choolu made the whole thing even better – His knowledge and understanding in design and producing was a real eye-opener. His level of proffesionalism was and still is a source of inspiration for me.

I think he enjoyed working with me too because in 2009 he gave me another cover art project…

To see the next project we worked on, click here:

http://arbelicious.com/works/album-covers/album-covers-2/album-covers-3/