Finally, an update on the 2012 album we have been working on (earlier post, here).
Came up with these designs over two evenings. For our to-be-released-in-a-few-day’s-time, kinda-hard-to-label-a-genre digital album.
1. “deca”
2. “TEN”
3. “DEKA”
A few hours ago, the band — along with our guest collaborator, urmymuse, who is from halfway around the globe — have reached on a majority vote for design No. 3, “DEKA”.
We started working on the tracks around Jan this year Dec 2011. Fast-forward to Sept, when it sunk in that 2012 would be the 10th global birthday celebrations for Creative Commons, we wanted our album to be a gift to the movement.
The album has 10 tracks, for CC’s 10th birthday this year, slated for October.
A 10-10-10 combo.
HOW THE COVER CAME TO BE
My first design looked like this:
It was passable as a symbol or logo. But somehow it didn’t quite cut it as an album cover. Looked too cold; too detached. The opposite of what our music represented.
So I wondered about the etymology for “decade”. That led to my discovering the term “deca”, which was Latin for “the combining form for ‘Ten'”: “decapod”, “decasyllabic”, “decathlon”, “decametre”…
Multiples of ten.
Bingo!
But I wondered if it might be too subtle or indirect for people to catch on.
No harm in posting the question in Facebook. Kind of expecting zero comments, so I was really surprised to get plenty of good ideas and useful comments from my Facebook contacts. Thanks folks!
All things considered, “deca” was quite appropriate.
I used Keynote on my iPad to piece together a few ideas. Ended up using Keynote as my “photoshop”!
Within hours of the Facebook comments and doodling in the iPad, I managed to churn out design No. 1.
Emailed that off to Adrian, I-Ling and urmymuse. Explained the concept to them. And hoped they would agree. Or at least, no violent objections from them.
Adrian was first to give “deca” his approval. Next was urmymuse, who added that the Greek spelling (deka) was preferred but it wouldn’t be something to “die in a ditch” for (LOL).
By that time, I also preferred DEKA over DECA. Particularly after considering the Facebook comments. For one, “deca” might lead to some people subconsciously associating it with “decay” or “decadence” — unrelated words, no doubt but still might prove distracting rather than adding to the album’s intrigued.
I churned out designs no.s 2 and 3, and emailed to the band. Promised this would be the last iteration (any more options and it would be counterproductive).
Our vocalist, I-Ling, liked DEKA too.
So that’s that.
All ten tracks have been mastered, bounced; the uncompressed files sitting in my hard disk (backed up, for sure) waiting to be prepped with metadata (I use iTunes for that).
It’s a public holiday this Friday, so i’ll be publishing the album this weekend.
The album will be pretty niche.
It’s perhaps best described as “almost progressive meditative pop post-rock”.
Whatever it might be called, it’s our labour of love.
Starfish Stories :: The Band 
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