Secret 7

OUGD503: SECRET 7

Robert Hunter To create something this intricate all for an album is fascinating, it is intricate and detailed and tells a story of the songs which are encompassed between the pages. It expands on the tracks and explains them visually illustrated, the booklet sells the song more than the song itself. The colour schemes are strong and the illustrative content is explanatory almost like a comic strip without the text. To see the illustrations as part of an advertisement would tie the whole design in together and make it all relatable to one another.

RESEARCH

1) Patterns are always very captive of the audience, they draw us in by the complexity that they present, which is constituted by one simple shape. It creates almost a maze effect that guides the eyes left and right across the page in a methodical way despite the chaos it presents on the whole.

2) This design focuses in the sounds of the song, it is simple but with a strong concept behind it. The negative space makes it seem laid out well, it is uncluttered and has a clean and fresh feel.

The Barbican Centre Dr. Lakra’s collection of Vinyl’s shows a range of different designs and styles ranging from bright and loud to subtle and monochrome. Seeing a large amount of designs all against each other makes them seem much more appealing on the whole, they bring out the most prominent features in each one making them stand out much more. They have nice qualities and each have some really interesting features, when seen as a whole to begin with that is how they are best perceived.

JESSICA JOHNSON

Kyle Bean This design is structured and dynamic, the directional focus of all the lines create movement and piece doesn’t become static or uninteresting. The figure and ground is easily distinguished and the gold suggests of quality and wealth. Although I feel this is very strong and I like the concept of combining the intricate and detailed face with the geometric lines, I don’t initially see what it is advertising, I presume it is the USB but this isn’t very clear.

OUGD503: SECRET 7

Purpose To communicate a song without using text in a way that is understandable. The reason is for fun and charity, as it is a secret it needs to be image only to communicate the song.

RATIONALE

Audience The audience is a wide range of people from designers to music lovers of all ages. People that will be at the exhibition and sale of the album covers if they are chosen. The audience is also the artists of the music themselves as some are involved in the choosing process.

Format Materials The design will be created digitally but prepared for As I am only creating this digitally I only need the print in CMYK with a 3mm bleed software.

JESSICA JOHNSON

Message The message of the song is quite serious and doesn’t suggest of much happiness. It also talks a lot about tv screens and the mind, this is the visual message that I want to convey.

Tone of Voice I want it to look quite serious and formal but also at the same time I want the digital element to be contemporary and fresh as I feel that this is persona of the artists.

Placement/Distribution As this record sleeve would be a one off it would be sold on Record Store Day in April as part of the raising money for charity side of the competition.

Must Do’s/Must Dont’s/Time Frame I must create something visually engaging I must consider the content of the song I must keep to the document guidelines I must not reveal my track in any way I must not go down any obvious routes I must not forget the deadline Time Frame: Complete by 4th March

OUGD503: SECRET 7

Colour The colour palette used for my first design is totally monochrome, a spectrum of white to full black with plenty of grey shades in-between. Focusing on the tv static made this colour scheme seem obvious, it was something I wanted to strongly convey and the theme of the song is quite bleak and depressing so this would fit quite well. Even though the colours were limited it still looks like there are a large volumes of greys, this creates more depth and realism of the image.

DESIGN CHOICES

Line Weight & Design The line weight I used throughout the design varies only slightly, because the background is quite chaotic it needed to be thick to stand out, the circuit shapes are 1.6 and the brain 1.3, using black worked best against this background to stand out but stil fit in with the colours. The design of the brain on the static is to represent the chaos that the lyrics in digital witness suggest, they show the fuzziness and unclear state but this is then contrasted with strong clean lines and illustrations.

Colour The colour within my second design was inspired by the image I think of when I think of the artist Sia. It shows her dressed in turquoise on a turquoise background. This became the basis of my colour palette and using the opacity tool I created a variety of colours that worked well together. I used opacity within the circles as part of my concept to show harmony and fusion, this helped to create some different colours as I used her hair colour to create the base colour of the circles.

JESSICA JOHNSON

Line Weight & Design As the background of this design was much more simple and uncluttered this allowed me to create a more delicate design. Although the circuit board is still quite busy I was able to design it with a stroke of 0.8pt, this made it seem quite delicate and fragile which fits in with my concept of the confusing and the gentle overlapped. The circles represent the gentle and harmonisation layered with a busy map of a circuit board that has no end, it trails off the page, this also guides the audience from the centre.

OUGD503: SECRET 7

FINAL DESIGN

At the end of the designing and development stage I came to picking my final designs for submission, as my development process was quite lengthy I had a lot to choose from my experimental work. I chose six designs that I thought had the most potential, I chose some that were similar and from the same set but other earlier ones also that were opposing a style to add some contrast. Now that I look at them as a set I feel like the black ones are too dominant and overpower the less forceful designs, however I prefer the most subtle ones that have more intricate detail.

Throughout this brief I have learnt how important it is to have a concept behind my ideas, this helped me to develop my ideas quicker as I had a large body of research to influence and take note from. The outcome of the designs were much stronger than I anticipated, all design decisions were justified with a valid reason and this lead to my design becoming quite obvious. They work well as a set but also individually, the textured backgrounds add depth and a textured feel to the design, this could be created by using a grainy stock. vvv

JESSICA JOHNSON