For my Intro to Graphic Design course, our first project was to select a jazz song (which was SO fun, because I LOVE jazz, and that was my first degree!) and then design an album cover for it using specified design principles. We were limited to circles, rectangles, triangles, and lines, which could overlap however we wanted them to. We had to create a custom color palette that aligned to certain criteria. We were limited in our choices of fonts. And we had to have a certain number of shapes in the design overall. The entire thing was meant to be abstract, and we were meant to listen to our chosen song as we worked. There were many rounds of sketching, culling, refining, and sketching again to get to the final product!
The only problem was, at the end, I couldn't decide between my two favorites. I won't tell you which one I actually submitted! ;)