When Milena Kavrakova first called me in 2019, I had no idea I was about to begin the longest-running creative collaboration of my career. What started as a conversation about a debut album grew into a six-year project spanning nine single covers, one album cover, a series of promotional posters, and an extensive booklet documenting the work behind the music.

Milena, a classically trained cellist, had spent years developing the album. Each composition was deeply connected to a place she had visited during her travels, carrying its own story, atmosphere, and emotional weight. The challenge was to create artwork that reflected those connections while maintaining a consistent visual identity across the entire project.

The central concept was simple in theory but surprisingly difficult to execute: the cello would become part of the landscape itself. Over the years, countless concepts and drafts were explored. We embedded cellos in forests, submerged them underwater, left them half-buried in mud, covered them in debris, and allowed them to appear weathered, abandoned, and reclaimed by nature. Some ideas worked immediately; many didn’t. The process became one of experimentation, refinement, and occasionally pushing ideas to their breaking point.

One image in particular, a cello suspended and frozen in ice – ultimately became the album cover. It captured the themes running through the project: time, memory, place, and the enduring connection between music and landscape. It also provided a fitting visual anchor for the collection as a whole.

With the album artwork established, I went on to create a series of promotional posters while Milena painstakingly completed the recording and mastering process. The final stage of the project was designing a detailed booklet that brought everything together, pairing each artwork with the stories, inspirations, and locations behind the music.

It was a long project, much of it completed during lockdown, but it remains one of the most rewarding collaborations I’ve been involved in. Few projects offer the opportunity to revisit and evolve an idea over such a long period of time. Along the way, I got to know Milena well, and it was a privilege to help bring her vision to life. I wish her every success with the album and whatever comes next.