Asymptote 漸近線

<青虫 aoi> Cassette Tape Design
Local indie rock band AOI approached me to design the album art for their debut release, Asymptote (audio cassette–only).

AOI’s frontwoman explains the title like so: In geometry, there are certain curves which become straighter and straighter the further along you go. You can think of one as running alongside some straight line, never touching or crossing it but always a little nearer to it than before. This straight line is its asymptote—a metaphor for the elusive dreams that we grind closer to each day, but which remain always just out of reach.

To translate this metaphor into a visual concept, I began with the three “types” of asymptotic curves (horizontal, oblique, and vertical), and pictured each as boundary lines dividing a canvas into three regions. From this, a sense of layering emerged.

In the final design, the narrowing gap in the center is depicted as a channel between two neighboring land- scapes, almost touching but completely isolated from each other. Each one features a cutesy character in transit along this channel, both to suggest the scale of the image and convey a sense of the long journey ahead.

_{Client: 青虫 aoi}
2019