The Band
Based in Washington, DC, Vector Trio (www.vectortrio.com) is the amazing jazz trio of Scott Forrey, Gary Rouzer and Marshall Hughey. I’ve known Scott since college, and Gary and Marshall since they formed the band back in 1996. In 2006, they were invited to perform at the prestigious Festival of New Trumpet (FONT at www.fontmusic.org) in New York City. When the invitation came in, they were already in the studio recording the first tracks of a new CD. Suddenly the pressure was on to finish the studio work, and get the CD pressed and packaged in time to distribute at the Festival. Scott called me up and asked if I would take a shot at it.
They gave no instructions or suggestions to start, which is not only the best way to work on a project but also extremely rare - it’s the only way to really have fun with a design. I give the guys a lot of credit for just stepping back and turning it loose.
At the time, the working title of the CD was Panabáj, which was a name of one of the tracks already recorded. Panabáj was a small Mayan village in Guatemala at the base of a volcano on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a place Scott and his wife Betty had visited only recently. Soon after, the village was destroyed by a mudslide that cascaded down the slopes of the volcano, and completely entombed the whole village along with it’s residents. Very few bodies were ever recovered, and the entire town was declared a national gravesite.
This story became the working concept for the CD design.
Initially, I produced a seven completely different designs for them to choose from, most of which I still like, and so did the guys in the band. Some may yet be used on future projects. Rather than elaborate on them all here, I’ll just share the evolution of the one design they decided to use. Thumbnails of the other mockups are below.
Initial Concept
