CLIENT
Chris Jobson
year
2025
role
Creative Direction
Wish You Well is the debut release from Chris Jobson, a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Arranged and produced by his father, Eddie Jobson, of Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull fame, the album is a carefully recorded introduction to an artist who is finding a new path through genre. It's made by someone who grew up listening to the progressive rock of his father, the sunny warmth of Laurel Canyon 70’s folk, and modern indie. The brief for the album cover was direct: something simple that connected to that lineage without becoming pastiche. No vintage filters for their own sake, no retro typography deployed as a shortcut to credibility. The imagery needed to feel like it belonged to the music — unhurried, natural, grounded in a specific place — without telling the listener what to think about it.
Alternate Cover Idea
Alternate Shot
The shoot was built around the idea of finding home in Los Angeles, but we wanted it to feel at the same time ethereal and anywhere. The connection to LA is present but not announced, which felt right for an artist introducing himself on his own terms rather than through a borrowed context. The brief said don't distract from the music, and the answer to that wasn't minimalism for its own sake — it was finding an image with enough presence to stand next to the songs without competing with them.
Album Artwork
The final cover is a single image: landscape, natural light, no treatment beyond what the camera recorded. The typography is set with restraint: the artist name and title present but not competing with the photograph. The system extends across the full release: alternate covers, vinyl packaging, and title animations for digital distribution, all running from the same visual logic.
Music Video: Home
Home is a song about physical and spiritual aimlessness, the feeling of moving through the world without a fixed point to return to. The video was shot in New York, moving through the city in the way the song moves through its subject: not looking for resolution, but documenting the search. We shot on Super 8 and camcorder, which added grain and warmth and the particular quality of footage that feels like it was shot by someone who was actually there. The format was a creative decision made with the cinematographer, where we wanted the texture and the slight instability of those formats felt true to what the song was about. My role was concept and on-set direction.
Title Animation for the music video "Home"
The album was released through Globe Music and received coverage noting the production and the range of Chris's musicianship. For a debut release from a developing artist, the visual work needed to do something specific: signal that what you're about to hear was made with intention. I think it does that. The thing I took from this project into everything else is the discipline of the brief: don't distract from the work. That applies to a gala stage and a conference brand as much as it applies to an album cover. The design is working when it makes the thing it surrounds feel more like itself.