KIKO SHRED now that's a great name. We made contact via facebook after Kiko had posted a video of his amazing guitar work - I was very excited to see that Michael Vescera was part of the project. Moving back to 2015, Michael Vescera and Barry Sparks (both worked together with Yngwie Malmsteen) had formed a new band. I knew Barry from his time with Rock band UFO and Barry approached me with a brief of creating the bands branding. We started with various ideas and album names but very quickly Barry and Mike decided on ‘Riot On Mars’ as a band name. Barry secured a Japanese record label deal and a band logo was designed.
Next up was the album packaging design and the album was released --- see related projects below.
KIKO was about to release the album 'ROYAL ART' and all the artwork and packaging had already been created and the amazing work had been created by Alcides Burn. We agreed that maybe I would work on the follow-up album. Two weeks later, Kiko contacted me and had been thinking a lot about our initial conversation. Would I be up for just designing the cover only? This was a unique situation for me as I usually design the album cover and all the packaging. I listened to the music as was fired up - sure, let's give it a go.
My first task was to re-design the KIKO SHRED logo and after many sketches came up with the 'scissor-style, interlocking' lettering.
I was impressed with Alcides work and the cover had to compliment the booklet pages, Jewel case art etc. The more ideas I had, the more I felt uncomfortable knowing that the existing cover that Alcides had already created may never see the light of day. It hit me, why not incorporate the existing artwork into the cover somehow? That was the challenge.
In creating the artwork, a featured window was created. In that window I incorporated Alcides artwork (my only contribution to this, was the addition of the moon within the window).
Its always going to very tricky to try and blend this artwork with the rest of the scene. Hopefully this was achieved.
You can view the animated 'Lyric video' HERE
Awesome - Man that's great, Love it.
Kiko Shred, from Sao Paulo, Brazil - KIKO SHRED