With this CD I was lucky enough to get Pelle and Mariliis from Sotapota to work on my CD’s artwork. It was obvious that the artwork had to be connected to the dance topic but it took some time to get the final idea that we used.

First we started with a photo session and made hundreds of photographs. Many of them are now in my guitar method book. But you find many motifs from the photos from my Dance Album, too.

There are different boxes for CD-s and from working in the radio station I knew that the old regular jewel box is the best in many ways. But I also knew that I had to send my album via regular mail to many countries and then it is the weight and durability that matters. Our choice was 3-sided digipak with the booklet (24 pages) clued to the left side and the transparent tray in the middle.

This was the form of the artwork but how should it look and what kind of information should it carry? I’ve seen thousands of classical music CD-covers in radio that doesn’t tell you anything except for the titles of the tracks. Not even the length of them but this is a highly relevant thing in the radio work! And my CD was designed for the radio stations in all ways.

So everything was to be very practical (normal tracklist at the back with track durations and the proper names of the composers with their living years) but it wasn’t enough to form a artwork.

I order artworks for many CD-s and books and flyers and posters and websites every year. Not to mention the stickers, sales propositions etc! So I have a lot of experience when it comes to the cooperation with artists and designers. And there is one thing that I really hate: this is when they expect ME to decide everything and make me choose from tens of similar variations. I am not a visual artist and that’s why I want them to do the job. Of course I must like the outcome but when an artist is taking it seriously then I don’t have a slightest chance to make better decisions.

This time it was different! I got almost the complete work (on the last day, of course!). I had come across the treatise by Thoinot Arbeau (1558) that is one of the main sources for the information relating to the historical dance. It includes dance tablatures and they look great! Look at these:

So I had sent them off to Pelle and he had found some better copy of the book and here we are: the artwork has now 2 layers. One is the historical treatise and the other is from our photo session. It couldn’t be better and this is really one of the few times when I did not want to change anything! And I still like the work very much. Pelle has won some contests with his CD-covers before and my CD has also been nominated here and there.