Album Art Project Process Book by
Cody Heginbottom
For my Introduction to Graphic
My solution to this was to make the
Design class, we were asked for our final
three band members into silhouettes. I
project to create and or re-create any
felt like that would be the best option for
album from any band of our choosing.
this project so I could add the members
We were asked to create something as our
and make them my own without having
own, but still use elements from the band
facial features that could come off as a
and to think about using art that the band
distraction to the overall project.
would have used themselves for an album. I chose to recreate the Untitled
Just the band members as silhouettes made the overall piece seem empty and
Album by one of my favorite bands,
still did not make them the focal point like
Blink-182. I chose this band because they
I wanted it to be. To solve that problem, I
are one of my all time favorite bands and
wrote out a bunch of lyrics from the album
some of my all time favorite musicians. I
and scanned them into the computer. I
play lots of music myself and I have a lot of
then placed the lyrics inside the members
respect for the music they did. This album
bodies. It was my first time using hand-
recreated a genre and broke the “norm� of
drawn text and I actually really enjoyed it.
the pop punk/emo genre. This is one of my
Just seeing your own hand in a field that
favorite albums and it only seemed fitting
is computer based is really cool and I will
to recreate this album.
definitely do that again.
For this project, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do before we began. One of those ideas was that I wanted to stick to some of the origional color scheme of the album itself. I also wanted to add in a recreated version of their logo kind of like how the album actually looks. Those were the only two elements that I wanted to keep. When looking at the regular album, it feels like it was taken a lot from the origional album and one of the hardest parts was coming up with something origional, which I enjoyed doing a lot. I had another idea that I wanted to do with this project. I wanted to have the three band memebers, Mark, Tom, and Travis as the primary focal points of the project. I did not want to add details such as faces and clothing because I felt like it would take away from the project as a whole.
For this project we were told to come up with five different bands to create possible album covers for. Since music is something I care so much about, it was incredibly easy to come up with five different bands. For this project, the five bands I chose were Blink-182, Angels and Airwaves, The Story So Far, Taking Back Sunday, and The Dangerous Summer. I chose these bands for a number of reasons. One reason why I chose these bands is because they are a few of my favorite bands ever. Another reason, and the most important reason in regards to this project is because I love the album designs that these bands have used previously in their own albums. I love really graphic album artwork and I also really like photography. All of these bands work with these things I like really well. So for me, choosing these artists for this project really was a no-brainer.
When it came to the typography of this project, I really wanted to try something new. I decided that Along with a real font, that I also wanted use hand-drawn type. I have never used hand drawn type before but I was something I really wanted to try. For the regular font, I decided to go with a more “Grungey� feel when it came to the band name and the back with all of the song names. Since this band is really into really distorted designs and everything, it was something that I still really wanted to incorporate into this design because I also really like the distorted font type. I had also decided to use varsity-type fonts but decided that this piece would be more effective with the distorted font. I also decided that I wanted to use my own hand drawn type. I decided to put the hand drawn type into the bodies of the characters on the front of the album. I really liked using my own hand somewhere in the project. In an art from that is based around a computer, there is a really nice feel to creating something handdrawn. I really enjoyed doing that and I will definitely do it again in future projects that I do.
Going into the class critique, I had basically pre-determined that this was the band I wanted to use. I was pretty excited when everyone else in the class liked the same idea as me when it came to using this band and this design. I agreed with the class on what was and was not working in a few of these designs such as the neon green design. I did not like how it looked and there were others who felt the same. Everyone liked the idea of kind of using the same type of color scheme which was cool and I feel like we as a class came to pretty much the same decision on what was the most successful piece. I chose the colors because I really like how well the colors go together. They are visually appealing and I think the rest of the class recognized that as well. The class also liked the design layout and they liked how it related to the origional but it was not a direct copy of the origional piece.
I feel like this final piece is working out nicely because I was able to keep some of the same design work that the band would normally use while allowing my own designs to show through in this project. The piece, in my opinion, has a lot of balance to it and for me, there is not a side or spot that your eye directs itself to. That has always been distracting for me when that happens so I try to keep an equal balance whenever I can. There is also a clear indication as to whats the hierarchy in the piece. I believe you really notice the characters before anything else in the design. Mostly because they are front and center and the design and also because the writing inside the characters makes you focus on them for a bit longer to take a second to read whats on the inside. I concluded this design by making sure that I maintained an overall balance to the project. I also made sure the project had an overall working color scheme and I wanted to make sure the placement of the characters and writing was in a spot that did not allow your eye to focus on one section.
In conclusion, I believe that this project came out quite well overall. I was able to make design choices for myself while still fulfilling the project requirements as well as creating something that I feel the band would like an actually use if it was created around the time this album was realeased. If I could do something differently, I would have probably tried to make the characters look more professional and have taken more time to make sure that the quick selection did not come out poorly in some areas. That is really one of the only big spots that I would try my hardest to fix. That might not be something that would be fixable, but I would love to try. I would have still done the sketches traditionally because for me, I feel like it is easier to get my ideas across by hand. Plus, it is a really rewarding feeling to watch a drawing fall into place on the computer. I really enjoyed seeing my overall ideas come out how I wanted them to on the computer. I honestly don’t think I would have chosen a different band. I really like Blink-182 and I love their designs that they use. This type of style is something that I could really see myself using in the future. It was cool to learn how they do some of the design work that they use. I am very happy overall with how this project turned out. There are some things that I would like to fix such as how the characters came out, but I honestly think its normal to be critical of your work so overall I am really happy with it all and how everything turned out.
Process Book by
Cody Heginbottom