Album artwork and visual identity for Welshly Arms, a Cleveland-based blues rock band

Welshly Arms is a Cleveland-based band with a growing international audience. Their sound is gritty, soulful, and blends blues, rock, and gospel influences, 

The challenge was to create a cohesive visual identity across multiple releases that captured that sound while resonating with the band and their expanding reach. The work extended beyond individual album covers to include packaging design, CD artwork, and a system that could translate across formats.

I worked closely with the band throughout the process, developing the direction through iteration and conversation rather than a fixed brief.

The band was drawn to my previous collage work, which became a starting point for the visual direction. I leaned into digital collage to balance modern and retro influences, layering texture and found imagery to create work that feels raw, expressive, and slightly offbeat.

Welcome centers on a vintage image of an impossibly tall cowboy shaking hands with a suited figure. The exaggerated scale introduces a surreal edge, while geometric elements from the logo become bold graphic accents.

The Covers EP features two disjointed figures with bright circles obscuring their faces. Heavy texture and a vintage treatment create a mysterious, gritty tone.

For the self-titled release, the logo emerges from a cloud of smoke, suggesting a moment of reveal. The smoke carries through to the back cover, with a complementary orange and blue palette adding contrast and energy.

Client

Welshly armS
position music

Role

creative direction, layout design, logo design, print design, package design

Deliverables

logo, album art, cd packaging, poster design

Album Art

Logo

The logo needed to feel bold, simple, recognizable, and reflective of the band’s modern yet retro sound. It also needed to work across a range of applications, from album artwork to merchandise and live performances.

I designed a simplified mark by reducing the letters W and A into a set of intersecting geometric forms.

The result is a bold, timeless graphic form that feels modern but still has a slightly retro sensibility, reinforced through the color palette. It works well as a single-color stroke, making it flexible across different formats and uses.

The logo was later adapted into a lighted sign for live shows, and held up clearly at a larger scale.