The year was 1997, and I had fallen in love with a local (Spokane) band named Oil Filter. The band spent the summer of 1997 recording their debut (self-titled) feature length CD, and by this point in time we had established both a personal and working relationship. Throughout 1996 and 1997 I had helped the band lay out their t-shirts, set up a rudimentary website, and put together a basic promo pack. As recording wrapped up on the band’s CD, Matt (Oil Filter’s lead singer) asked me if I could layout and design the band’s CD package for them. I of course said yes.
For the cover, Matt requested a picture of the earth with the band’s name carved out of rock floating above it. This is what I came up with:
All of the artwork for the CD was done with Corel Photo Paint 5, which was comparable to Photoshop in that time.
Matt pretty much gave me cart blanch for the inside layout. I chose powerful pictures that (I thought) related to the song topics and then modified their colors before applying a vignette to each one. For example, for the song “Cleve”, I decided to use a picture of a welder. Here is the original photo I found on the Internet:
Then, using some simple color swapping techniques, I ended up with the following:
Each of these photos were then shrunk down to nearly thumbnail size. The above picture is less than 1″x1″ in size in the final layout. This is what it looks like:
Originally Matt had insisted on handwriting all the lyrics out, but I convinced him that using a handwritten font would work out better. I don’t know if it worked better, but it was a heck of a lot easier from a layout perspective.
Here’s another example; below is a picture of a flood I found online:
With a bit of editing, that picture became this one:
And, so on and so forth. Of the CD’s 16 songs, 10 had lyrics and so I ended up making 10 pictures. Ultimately I laid everything out using Pagemaker 5.
For the back cover, we ended up using a picture of a solar flare with the song titles listed on the right hand side. We also found out late in the game that the CD tray would be clear, so we came up with a pattern to lay underneath it. The picture looks kind of like a spoke wheel made out of bones; in reality it was a picture of the drummer’s arm, modified using a kaleidescope plug-in effect. I’m probably the only person in the world who knew what the picture really was (until today!).
The day before we were to mail in the final artwork we were informed that whatever format I had used was incompatible with what the printer needed. I don’t remember the exact details (maybe a DPI issue?) but I remember we were so distraught and frustrated that we had considered just printing color copies out and mailing those in. Around 11pm the night before our deadline, Matt and I were working frantically at Kinko’s trying to get the pictures and layout converted. In the end we were able to pull it off.
If you ever run across a used copy of Oil Filter’s debut CD (most likely if you live in Spokane), I’m listed twice in the credits: once under “Visual Media” and a second time as “All original art: Rob O’Hara and Oil Filter”. The “visual media” referred both to the disc’s layout, and another project I was working on. Around that time I had written an experimental program that would flash pictures up on a screen while the band played. I lacked the programming skills at the time to pull it off so what I ended up with was very crude. The whole thing was batch-file driven and called pictures that I had converted to executable files. The whole thing was scrapped and never got past the beta stage. It would have been cool if I could have pulled it off.
When Matt asked me what I was going to charge the band for all of this work, I told him what I wanted up front. Prior to this CD, Oil Filter had released two independent cassette tapes. The vocals on both of those cassettes are difficult to decipher and were considered to be somewhat of a secret. I told Matt that I would layout the entire Oil Filter CD in exchange for a complete set of lyrics to both Oil Filter cassettes. He agreed on the condition that I never share them with anyone. We shook hands and, true to his word, around the time I completed work on the CD Matt delivered me several yellow sheets of paper with hand written lyrics to every song on Oil Filter’s first two cassettes.
In the spring of 1998 I left Spokane and moved back to Oklahoma City. Not long after that, Oil Filter broke up. I am 98.3% sure the two events were unrelated.
(While digging through some old CD-Rs yesterday afternoon I ran across a directory containing the entire Oil Filter CD project — thus, this post.)
That is an awesome AWESOME story! I love reading little memories like that from people. And considering the graphic resources available at the time you did some amazingly great work.
Was this before or after they wouldn’t leave your house? haha
That’s funny. Would you do it all the same if you could do it again?
That’s a tough question because I think (A) we learn by doing and so (B) there’s very few things in life I would do exactly the same if I could do it all over again. Would I layout Oil Filter’s CD again for free? Sure. What would I do differently? Oh … well I would have found out the technical details from the company up front to avoid that last minute panic. Other than that, I think it came out pretty well. I’ve received lots of CDs in the mail to review that look worse than this one.
Would I do things the same in regards to the 2002 recording visit? Not a chance. Would I still do it? Probably. Would I do it in my house? No.
The Oil Filter stories are so awesome that when I was recording a song a year ago and I was pitch shifting the guitar down I thought “I’m going to sound like Oil Filter” and then I remembered I don’t know what Oil Filter sounded like.