This spring, I’m entering my “western” phase of art direction. Coming up is Wyatt Earp and Into The West, but first up we have two Elmer Bernstein scores: The Shootist and The Sons of Katie Elder. Two albums on one disc gave me the opportunity to do a reversible cover – if you don’t like the cover on the front, flip the booklet over, and now you have a new cover to use!
The art assets for The Shootist were generally grainy and a bit blurry; I did what I could in Photoshop to clean them up a bit, and ultimately I’m happy with the result. In hopes of evoking the old west, I wanted the booklet to have a slight sepia tone to it, which shifts in color a little bit, once the liner notes start talking about The Sons of Katie Elder.
The assets for this film were of better quality, but with more black and white photos than color, I decided to tint a few of them to keep things visually interesting. The key art was not of a good size to fit into the square shape, so a bit of Photoshopping helped extend the wooden fence at the bottom of the image, allowing it to scale better on the cover.
The back tray came from a modified version of an alternate poster, and in the case of the disc art itself, I went for a very clean look, with just the titles, on a textured background based on another key art asset. If you’re a fan of Bernstein westerns, you should pick up this album today!