When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield releases his album recorded in space, it will feature cover art by a Newfoundland illustrator and graphic designer.

Jud Haynes said he was shocked and excited to receive a cold call from Warner Music last May, asking him to do the artwork for Space Sessions: Songs from a Tin Can.

Hadfield recorded the groundbreaking album during his 2012 mission to the International Space Station; it's the first album to be recorded off Earth.

Although Haynes spoke with Hadfield about ideas for the cover, Haynes pretty much had full creative control.

"They had no preconceived notions of what they wanted at all," said Haynes.

"The words that Chris used for me, which is how I knew I could really run with it, was from looking at my portfolio, he really enjoyed my sense of odd."

Haynes said he combined Soviet influences from the 1930s and 40s with images from 1950s science fiction novels in designing the artwork, hoping to create a timeless feel.

"I wanted this record not to look modern and slick and trendy and fit into the world of now. This is arguably the first piece of art that was ever created in space," he said.

"With that I wanted to make sure it was a record that would still look cool 30 years from now, 50 years from now, and 100 years from now...as opposed to looking forward I was looking backwards."

Haynes said he was extremely nervous to send his ideas to Hadfield, but that the former astronaut loved what he saw. He did, however, have an acute sense of detail and pointed out inaccuracies that would bypass the untrained eye.

"There's an image of him doing the space walk in the upper left hand corner similar to his image on the five dollar bill. I had originally put jet propulsion packs on it, and he picked up on that even in a small little image in an email and said, 'when I did my space walk I didn't actually use one of those jet propulsion packs, so if you could remove the pack that'd be great,'" said Haynes.

"I was just so blown away that I was actually having these conversations with someone who had actually done those things."

Among the many images on the cover, Haynes also included a sheaf of wheat as a throwback to Hadfield's life growing up on a wheat and corn farm in Ontario.

"While everyone knows his story mostly because he's an astronaut, he obviously has so many chapters of his story so I wanted to represent all the different aspects of his life," Haynes said.

The 11-track album will be released on October 9.