Every year, Premier Guitar invites a different artist to design the cover of their Pedal Issue. In 2025, I was given the exciting opportunity.
I started with two rough concept sketches for the client to choose from: one featuring aliens in space floating on pedals emitting effects, and the other a shop for Bigfoots shopping for pedals, a play on the "big foot" pun. The client loved both but decided to go with the alien theme.
Next, I finalized the concept sketch. I researched the specific pedals the aliens are standing on to determine how their effects could be represented visually, and I styled the aliens to match the genre of musician that would typically use those pedals.
Next, I neatly illustrated all the linework using Adobe Illustrator. Then I adjusted and distorted the illustration where the guitar pedal effects overlapped them.
And then I started working on colour.
Final illustration
The magazine cover
