Galactic Rivers

The Client

Chris Eminizer is an all-around musician: saxophonist, pianist, singer, and percussionist.

He first came to us in 2013, working on his second album, Over Hills and Underground. He had photographs he wanted featured in the design and asked for white sketch overlays resembling ghostly apparitions, with the album's lyrics as inspiration. We designed the art and an eco-wallet layout, experimenting with the format across several drafts and prints.

The eco-wallet design, ghosts and all

Twelve years later, he came back.

The Ask

The new album, Galactic Rivers, was three years in the making: a twelve-song journey through jazz, electronic music, and prog rock. It needed a cover.

The concept we developed together: a robot playing saxophone at a porthole onto space, with a small bird for company. Chris wanted 60s psychedelia in the DNA, lavender and orange with bold black line art, in the family of old Doors posters. We also explored building bellows and air pumps into the robot's body as a nod to woodwinds (mini bellows for ears, an air pump torso), but couldn't land a design that made sense, so the robot stayed a robot.

The Process

The robot went through auditions first. A sketchbook round of candidates pulled from every droid we could think of (Iron Giant, the Rockafire Explosion, C-3PO) wandered somewhere annotated "this is getting creepy..." before pulling back. By the next page the character had found its headphones, and a saxophone had wandered in.

The audition	The callback

The direction that survived was the friendliest one: a rounded head, calm green eyes, and headphones as the tell that this robot is a listener as much as a player. The creepy cyborgs stayed in the sketchbook, and so did the Iron Giant jaws: a big hinged mouth looks great right up until you ask it to form an embouchure, and this robot had to look like it could actually play. We kept the joints and pistons exposed so he still reads as a machine, but gave him the posture of a working musician, leaned into the horn; Chris later described him as looking "like some beat hipster," which was exactly the energy we were after.

We sketched two layouts. One put the robot against a wall of synthesizers, the focus on the player and less on space; the other went backlit, space pouring through the porthole, the album name written in the smoke.

Synth wall	Porthole

Chris's reply: "Wow! Ok so I LOVE BOTH of these! ... Can I get both???"

So both it was. One became the front cover, the other the back.

Working for a musician means the details get audited. When we asked what kind of bird, Chris answered with a photo of a chickadee perched on his own hand. When an early draft had the robot's hands reversed on the sax, he caught it immediately ("Left hand should be on top. We're gonna play sax duets the next time you're here!"); it turned out we'd drawn it facing the other way and mirrored it, forgetting the hands would flip.

Karina plays saxophone herself (hence the duet invitation), so the keywork was drawn from the alto sitting in her own lap, and Chris later confirmed the fingering: "BIG KUDOS on the sax keys and the fingers!!! It looks like he's playing a 'G'!" When the front cover's tenor became the back cover's alto, we adjusted the neck curve on request to read properly.

The reference	The character

Color took a few rounds: swirls pouring out of the bell versus none (we lobbied for the "rivers" of swirls, given the title), flat 60s color versus gradients, cutouts versus outlines, grainy texture versus clean:

Full 60s flat	No outlines	White outline and glow

Chris picked his winner with a numbered list of reasons, including "Robot's mouth is fab, almost looks like a pretty good embouchure, lol," and closing with "Fantastic work. Lets go with that!" His favorite detail was the bird's expression: "It looks like he's thinking, 'really? You playin' that thing again?'"

The back cover had one more idea in it. Rather than repeating the view from inside, we flipped the camera: the whole scene seen from outside the ship, through a smaller, frostier porthole, leaving dark space around it for the track list.

All of it is hand-drawn vector work in Adobe Illustrator, organized into named layer groups down to the screws on the porthole frame. Here's a quick tour through the file:

Four minutes of Illustrator, compressed into forty seconds

We delivered the full kit: PNGs and SVGs at multiple scales plus the original Illustrator file, so Chris's designer could set the typography and adapt the art wherever the album went.

Front	Back

The Outcome

The single "Something in the Field" released in September 2025, with the full album a week behind it, typography set by designer Lindsey Morano. The outside-in porthole fronted the single; the sax player fronted the album.

The single	The album

Artwork by Karina Chow, in print

The robot now doubles as Chris's avatar, and Galactic Rivers is on his site and Bandcamp and streaming everywhere.

And the quiet headline: a client from 2013 who, twelve years and a career later, came back for the next one. Over Hills and Underground is on Spotify too; make it a double feature.