I absolutely love the cover art I wound up with for “Thank You for Approving of My Coffee.” But making it was quite the process.
After designing the art for my first few releases from scratch, I thought I’d take a different approach this time around and try using generative AI, particularly because I just couldn’t land on any designs of my own that I liked.
Like most AI these days, it took MANY attempts to conjure an image that spoke to me, but the outtakes also wound up being too great to keep to myself.
With that in mind, come join me in exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of these alternate designs, which I’ve dutifully gathered off the digital cutting room floor.
Thanking the Masses
One of the earliest concepts I was playing around with was a person standing at a podium holding an enormous trophy full of coffee while “thanking” a massive crowd for approving of said coffee.
I loved the idea but no matter how many prompts I tried, I couldn’t get the AI to do anything I liked. This was one of the best attempts, but it just wasn’t doing it for me.
If anyone out there has the artistic (or AI prompting) skills to create such an image, I’d love to see it. Open invitation to send them my way and I’ll post any I like.
Caffeinated Penguin
Around 2002 or so, my family visited the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Waikiki, and right in the middle of the hotel lobby was this habitat full of penguins. I was captivated, and whenever we passed by, I’d insist on stopping for a minute to watch them just hang out and be super chill and awesome. Ever since, penguins have been pretty much my favorite animal.
With that in mind, I thought it might be fun for the cover to have a penguin making a coffee in an office break room.
I actually really like this as a pic on its own but it just didn’t feel like it fit the vibe of the actual song.
But I do still think penguins are lit. 
Panda-monium
My daughter absolutely loves pandas, which made me wonder if pandas drinking coffee at the office might be the greatest cover art ever.
It was not, but these still crack me up.
Renaissance Creeps
Clearly animals in the workplace weren’t working out, so I tried a different approach—what about Renaissance paintings of people happily enjoying coffee?
Unfortunately, I felt like the results were a little too creepy—the people were either laughing too creepily hard or their faces were creepily distorted or cross-eyed. Figured I’d spare everyone from that (aside from this post, of course 
).
Renaissance Pandas
Since neither cartoony pandas nor Renaissance folk were working for me, what about a mash-up of sorts—Renaissance pandas?
For a little while, these were front-runners, but I ultimately decided that again, although I very much enjoy looking at these masterpieces, they still didn’t feel like a good match for the song.
And that’s not all…
Yes, that’s right, there’s plenty more ridiculous images where these came from. Stay tuned for “Thank You for Approving of My Cover Art – Alternate Designs, Part 2” tomorrow!