Dogtown Studio Sessions - MUSIC + DIGITAL BOOKLET DESIGN

Released in March 2024, the Dogtown Studio Sessions are a collection of songs that were filmed & recorded live at Dogtown Studios in Grand Rapids, MI in June of 2022. The session also included a photoshoot. After the videos were released on my music Youtube account, I decided to revisit these recordings and do an official release for fans to purchase and download the tracks, which included a lyric booklet featuring photos from the shoot.

The songs, which were recorded and given an initial mix by the studio, required only some reworking. I trimmed parts of the audio, EQ'd, added some effects, and a master chain to balance out each song.

I started by selecting and editing the images I wanted to use.

The images from the shoot required much more time and detail. The lighting and camera settings were dim and underexposed at the time of the shoot. Because of time constraints I had to work with jpegs instead of the raw images, which also impacted quality. Regardless, I managed to get the images to a place that felt good enough to use in the lyric booklet.

From there, I drafted out the content and lyrics with a loose order.

For the content, I decided to include a backstory and thank you to my fans. It was easy to establish a tone for the copy since I was writing from my own perspective/experience.

The design of the booklet emerged through some experimentation.

Showcasing the images was important to me, I overlapped parts of them to give the pages an organic flow. I also opted to have the lyrics wrap around me. I chose fonts that were clean legible.

The release was announced on my social media account and received some love from fans. Overall, the importance of this project was to bring together various skills and give a sense of completion to the session.