Aphelion

CD/Digipak Client: SOI (USA) Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign .............. The challenge was to design a bright, minimalistic, modern digipak that reflects the lyrical, melancholic mood of the album. The first word that came into my mind when I "looked behind" the album's title was: time. I didn't want to translate what time is by directly deriving the final illustration out from the exact definition of what the title of the album, Aphelion means. Instead, I chose a visual interpretation which is less direct and much more close to us, mortal beings, as most of us can witness its effect just by looking at the nature around us: We can measure time by observing the cycle of Seasons.

Therefore the main subject is a tree, which leaves - as we open the lyrics book and proceed further, page by page - are gradually starting to turn into red and eventually die off until we get to the back cover, and the cycle can start over next time when the disc is being played again.

Regarding the disc itself, I applied the same idea as above, with an additional layer of how time leaves its mark on our world. Many trees in temperate zones produce one growth-ring each year, with the newest adjacent to the bark. Hence, for the entire period of a tree's life, a year-by-year record or ring pattern builds up that reflects the age of the tree. Each circular growth-line represents one cycle of Seasons, and I chose this pattern to symbolize the elliptic paths of celestial bodies in the well known Solar System Map, created by astronomers based on the Heliocentric world view. The little dark spot seen on the disc is a tree-spasm, right at it's "aphelion point", just to reflect the main theme of the album.

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