Samba Mundi

About the project

Samba Mundi's composer Marcello Maio, a 23-year-old from Sydney, Australia, wanted a special cover for his first album. Listening to the music and exploring the sound with colors, this is what I came up with.

For this piece we wanted to extract the essence of the music, the groove from the musicians and the spirit of the composer. The album was recorded live in Sydney, Australia, and we wanted to capture this live session and represent the music, abstraction, freedom and variety of cultures all together. We started with lots of hand drawings making sketches of less than a minute each while listening to the music. Exploring with paint splatters and smudges to get a closer insight of what the music was leading our hands and minds to make. We digitized two hand drawings in Illustrator, then used Photoshop to color, texture, shadow and then used the paint splatters for a more unique feel.

This project got published in a design magazine in South Korea "Creative W.E.B. Magazine". One of the illustrations made the cover of the September issue and inside an interview with art director Piero Salardi showcasing a collection of his most representative work through the years.