Secret 7 Design Boards

SECRET 7 The Secret 7 is an annual brief that aims to promote vinyl records through the creative arts, any artist or designer can submit a design and the most successful pieces are then selected and are sold in exhibition in London. The rules state that the design needs to be 7 inch by 7 inch and should not feature the song name or the artist in the design.

Design a 7� record sleeve for one of the following 7 artists: Beginning this project I was excited to create something new and different and explore some techniques I hadn’t used before and seeing what kind of engaging and exciting works I could possibly create in relation to each track.

As this brief is a real competition this is an excellent way to get my work out into the creative field and try and create something that will be in a real gallery, To get my work into the exhibition I knew I need to insure that my work is to the highest level of possible and show a definitive, exciting content.

As the different tracks in this project would form the basis of this project and inform my research great consideration into each songs themes, styles and message would allow my designs to be much more informed. As there is no limitations in this brief there is a real opportunity to look at the idea of a the work being more conceptual, as apposed to a much more literal brief’s I have worked on previously.

Identifying what see to be the obvious approach to each track will allow me to think about if I want to follow this or create something more conceptual.

For me it was key in this project to pick a song I feel I personally engage with, this will then inspire my designs and allow me to enjoy the design process much more.

Chvrches - Clearest Blue less obvious and something different. In previous briefs I would be quick to use the computer in a lot of my initial designs and idea generation, as the internet can be a great tool for finding images quickly it is easy to get into a routine of doing all my research digitally. Making sure I stay away from this in this project has allowed me to discover work I would never have and make more in-depth design decisions from primary research. As the record covers purpose is to promote the track the design had to be made with consideration into what the track expresses, the meaning and message, how this can then be translated into artwork and if this is in more clear and definitive imagery or something more ambiguous and conceptual.

As this is a live competition brief and the aim is to get the designs into the exhibition my designs have to be alluring and intriguing only then will they ever be considered for inclusion.

Etta James - At Last

The Jam - Art School

Jack Garrett - Worry

John Lennon - Imagine

Starting this project I had a think about which track to choose, I could have looked at creating multiple designs for a few tracks but I felt that choosing one would narrow down my research and look further into how the track could be perceived how I could respond to this in my working.

My aims and ambitions for this brief right away was to see if I could make all my designs without a computer, researching from mainly books from the library would offer a much more in-depth analysis of record cover designs and hopefully staying away from online means of research will make my work Max Richter - Dream 3

Tame Impala - The Less I Know the Better

When conducing some initial research into album cover design it was appropriate to look at seven inch records in particular. As these dimensions will formulate the basis of my work and are the only real restrictions within this project asides from the making sure I do not give away the title of the band or artist. Looking at some of the iconic seven inch sleeves over the years would show me if there is anything in particular that makes a seven inch record eye catching. This book offered an interesting inside into some very different designs, showing how in record cover design there is no underlining theme and the artwork an generally show anything. I have tried to highlight some of the more engaging and interesting designs, picking a large range of artist and genres to give me a better overview of what is successful and why.

Looking at these design in context of a seven inch record it is clear that as the size of obviously much smaller the designs need to me more simplistic and work with the space. Making to scale mock ups will allow me to better understand the scale and whether its appropriate for my artwork. In addition think type sizes are much larger with these records to make them stand out. All of these designs seem to use either black or white or some very bright and striking colours. Collage is a technique that is seen in many of these designs. The imagery is somewhat vivid and ambiguous with a few eye-catching elements, I could look to replicate these features in my own work. Bright colours in particular is something I greatly considered from an early point to make my as eye catching as possible.

I decided to begin by looking at Max Richter Dream 3 however I felt I could still come back to the other tracks later on in the project. Out of the seven that this track stand out as a little different and is unique to its lack of definitive words, the music has very subtle ambiance and seems to slowly build up. The album it came from is a kind of lullaby and is supposed to help the listener sleep. The song is very simple in its own right, the use of only a piano, strings, vocals and electronics to create a calming melody.

Max Richter talks about the album stating “It’s my personal lullaby for a frenetic world,” and that it is “A manifesto for a slower pace of existence.” The music has more of a conceptual background and can be interpreted in to pretty much anything, this allowed my design ideas to be really broad and explore a range of themes.

The track being so enigmatic there is a real opportunity to create something much more ambiguous and conceptual. The theme of sleep is something explored frequently by designers and artists and can prompt some extremely deep and subconsciously driven work. How I interpreted this idea of sleep could take many forms, exploring the subconscious and dreams in art and design initially I think of surrealism, this is the exploration of the subconscious and how this can be conveyed in a figurative response. Surrealism however doesn’t just include paintings, Man Ray is a surrealist photographer that explored these theme in the weird and beautiful in the everyday. Dreams relating to Surrealism is a theme I felt appropriate look to explore in my work, as it a more obvious approach exploring these more obvious ideas as well as more ambiguous themes will give me designs a more rounded designs that cover all the basis to insure that I have explored a range of ideas and find the most appropriate theme in this project.

Sleeves of Desire by Edition of Contemporary Music. This book gives an insight into the album cover designs from ECM records, how they create there designs, what influences them and what their style of design is. I have found this book to be incredibly insightful and engaging the work shows a clear distinct style yet allows the different themes of each of the albums to come through. I have picked out the design I personally found to be interesting and related to the ‘Dream 3’ themed song I have chosen to look at. Overall the artworks in no way feel commercially driven emphasised somewhat by the frequent use of small and subtle typography.

As the designs are ambiguous and almost concept driven this book has been an excellent source in my research, the principles and ideas of ECM records I have looked to emulate greatly in my own designs.

Many of the album covers feature almost surrealist photography the imagery is ambiguous, they do not show a clear message and aesthetically is intriguing.

The album covers top left designed by Barbara Wojirsch are extremely interesting and quite unusual, the build up of marks and lines in different mediums to create a beautiful textured backdrop for some subtle hand painted typography. The choice of tactile materials makes the album cover feel precious. The way the different levels of type are more and less obscured this creates a extremely detailed and interesting piece of work. The added level of effort and detail really add to the intrigue and success of this album design.

These designs for albums by ECM records are defiantly much more detailed and show an more direct and eye-catching kind of graphics, though still keeping the same attention to detail and use of minimal shapes and lines alongside abstract photography. These designs have much more of a immediacy to them and are a lot more striking compared to the other designs this is displayed more ruff and grunge style designs. This is another technique I feel I should experiment with within my own sketches and designs.

Overall this design book in this project offered the best source of research into very alternative record cover designs, they have showed me how to be more subtle and ambiguous in my working but the designs remaining memorable ad eye catching.

The dreamy imagery denotes my theme of the vivid subconscious and I hoped to express this in my own workings and ideas.

Sketching these initial 20 ideas based on my research and ideas so far. I have really tried to push my design ideas and come up with a completely different idea for each design.

This would then allow me to chose the most appropriate selection of ideas based on this.

Exploring different levels of ambiguity and clarity within each design to see how experimenting with these will effect the overall aesthetics of the record cover. Analysing why I have selected each one and what I can do moving forward and considerations for each moving forward. These four ideas described below have the most interesting themes behind them and could be taken forward into really informed and interesting designs.

Design number 6. Influenced by the work of Barbara Wojirsch, this design I felt would give me some great opportunities to try some new techniques, looking at the abstraction of space and line along side some more intimate and personal hand painted would create a design that is a bit different therefor setting it out from the rest. Within the context of Secret 7 being a competition this much more ornate and hand made design may rescind with the judges.

Although if chosen would take a lot of time and effort to be done right. This design is defiantly directly influenced by the work of ECM records and how they might put together a much more enigmatic design that reflects the ambiguity of the music.

INITAL IDEAS

Design number 13. Using masks at the fore front of the imagery in my artwork is a theme has been used many times in music, underground musicians especially use the masks to conceal there identity. This seemed to be emphasised by artists like Daft Punk creating an iconic persona based on the mask. With this design idea it had not occurred to me at all until I drew a large amount of different ideas this show the importance of creating a large range of different design ideas. The dynamic and eye-catching masks would make for a design that will leave the viewer wanting to know more. I felt this design would defiantly need much more further research and development, but was another opportunity to create something captivating and that will appeal to a large audience do to the ambiguity. As the masks thoughout history are so graphic and show exceptional use of line, colour and emotion that it would make a perfect fit for a enticing record cover design. Within this design I felt that looking at detailed collage, possibly paint or just line drawing will create

more exciting results, again not using the computer as much as possible to try something new in my design process.

Design number 15. This idea is a formulation of a couple of ideas (15, 9 and 17) all with this underlining them of Surrealism and the subconscious. As Surrealism links to dreams I felt that continuing to look into this style of art will create some compelling work. In particular I was interested in this idea of creating a dream scape much like the paintings of Salvador Dali. Depicted in idea 15 this elephant with extended legs is seen in a few of Dali’s painting and brilliantly combines the obscured and the recognisable. With this idea the attention to detail within choice and application of materials was very important and would be key to the overall aesthetics. Moving forward experiment with a number of different designs related to Surrealism, sing the extended horizon that seems to disappear into the distance.

Design number 20. This idea will again be a combination of a couple of ideas (1, 8 and 20) all looking at the composition of simplistic shape as the focus, this has been implemented in many extremely intriguing album covers over the years I looked at in my research. This idea is very different from the others as it is more conceptual this would construct a refreshing change in my designs and form a valuable alternative to my other designs. With this design it is important to consider the minor details of size and composition. The application of type within this design I felt should be subtle and not forbearing again implementing some of the design techniques concerning type that ECM records has used in my research. These four designs give me a great starting point with this project and can be changed and adapted as my work continues.

As these are my four more finalised ideas to labelling them idea 1, 2 ,3 and 4 in the order they are currently. I created these further developments of each of these ideas in the next page this would again further my reange of ideas to find the most appropriate imagery.

IDEA 1

I have created these six designs around 7 centimetre squared each as further experiments on my original four chosen ideas. These ideas look at the more artistic album cover from ECM records catalogue and creating my own designs experimenting with line and tone in its simplest form. The designs highlighting quality of materials and tactile textures.

Trying interpreting the ‘Dream 3’ Track in is simplest form.

This idea uses the text in the middle as the main focal point of the design I thought creating some hand written or painted typography showing one of the quotes I have found from the ‘Sleeves of Desire’ book. I wanted to build up a background that would highlight the central type. The varying stroke of line create is a frequent technique in the covers of ECM records and would be directly influenced by there record covers. I felt this design was too abstract and needed to have a clearer theme that could be communicated right away.

IDEA 2

Looking at ancient masks from around the world and creating a more simplified graphic masks and experimenting with the size and composition within the square format. I have exprimented with s range of techngueies and stlyes for these further ideas this was to identify what design best preprestned the mask theme. I feel the use of collage gives the designs a tactility that is key for this project. This design has an ambigiuity to it but each of the masks felt somewaht recogniasble due to there simplitic style.

IDEA 3

Looking at this theme of the subconscious, surreal art by artist like Salvador Dali and Giorgio de Chirico and their dream scape paintings. Using similar techniques of obscurity and abstraction shown within these paints and interpreting them into my own designs. Out of the four sets of designs I found these designs to be the most obivious for Dream 3 in terms of the content. Using a high horizon line that is typically used within the surrealist paintings and implementing this idea of a long inconsistent shadows that create an erie dream scape that looks slightly strange. The use of these shadows created something a little different and the link to the surrealist artist work was clear. The third design here stood out for me using the three pillars, this realted subtley to the Dream 3 title but is not too recogniable to give the title away.

IDEA 4

Using of simple abstract shape and how it can be displayed to be eye-catching and interesting.

Looking at composing the shapes on the page to be dynamic and as engaging as possible. This idea I felt is much more simplistic, and is a real change from the rest of my designs. As this idea is pretty vage I feel it is not that appropraite and should move foward with it in my designs, using some of these design elements I have implimented here with colour and composition into my other designs.

Moving forward after alot of anaylsis and experimentation I wanted to keep with idea 2 and 3 these I felt these two are the most relevent to the Dream 3 track and would lend themselves to the most engaging results.

Creating a more finalised layout of my two design ideas experimenting with different compositions and different levels of detail. These three designs show the progression of my ideas and how I have looked at the different sizes and angles of the three pillars and the corresponding shadows.

With this design I felt there was a familiarity that really related to this theme of dreams and the subconscious. The use of three monolith like pillars were very eye-catching and the use of the long extended shadows adds to this idea of obscurity and something abnormal and strange. I have looked closely at the angle of the shadows to try and make the design seem as if the shadows disappear into infinity. The final design at the bottom of the three would form the basis of my designs though I wanted start to experiment with some more engaging materials and techniques to better suit the idea. The different levels of detail within the background, the three pillars and the shadows is something I wanted to experiment with for this project to see what is most appropriate for a record sleeve.

The sketch above I felt the balance of the space was near perfect, the shadows are not too overpowering and give this dream like effect but have enough content to the as to not appear to confusing and abstract. This design would be a reference point in my further and more detailed final outcomes.

Using collage I have experimented with a different compositions of my dream scape idea shown the above. Collage as a material adds an extra level

of depth and tactility to the designs, there is also an opportunity to use and experiment with some varying paper stocks to see how this effect the aesthetics of the designs. For these designs I have used three different paper types, black, grey/ beige and white. As these three colours are very distinguishable from one another they allow me to look closely at the composition on the cover to see what feels the most nature and inviting.

The three pillars are composed within the square space to be the focal point of the design but giving the shadows enough space to show this outstretched horizon. I have rounded the top edges of each of the pillars to give them a more 3d feel. I think the black background design is an interesting change and is very eye catching however the black background may be too dominant and take away from the designs. The scanner I have used here has shown many marks on the designs that are not really there I think when I am to scan in my finalised design this is another very important consideration as it can really changed the overall finish of the work.

Looking at the four mask idea and creating these two much more detailed and finalised designs. I looked at creating a design that had a much higher level of detail. I found when drawing each of the masks that it was challenging to represent each mask accurately in a simplest form. Breaking down the designs to create much simpler, graphic designs helped achieve this. The design would translate effectively into collage, the naivety within these drawings is very memorable it adds a lot to my design and is something I wanted to continue with throughout my next steps in this project. Moving forward I looked at adding colour to these drawings to see how the different colour combinations effect the overall aesthetics of these designs. I wanted to experiment with a range of colour combinations to see what would work best with both these design ideas.

Picking out seven coloured GF Smith paper stocks what are all different but have contrasts from one another but have at least one colour that combliments. For example the light blue and dark blue Experiment with colour combinations to see which would create more impacting and distinctive designs. I created this initial sketch using red, green, yellow and blue but felt I needed to experiment further and see how my mask drawings looked in context. Creating so many various would give me a clear outline of what works well and what doesnt. This would be key in moving forward into my final collage design making sure I could create each know the colours work together.

These twelve images bellow show the different colour combinations, I asked my friends and class mates which colour combination stood out, and place to vote under each image. This would then be a reference point for me when creating the more detailed collages from a wide auidence to better understand how impacting the designer were.

I did the same process for the mask idea and the three monolith idea, contuniing to work on two very different ideas alongside eachother allow me to keep experimetning and seeing which would in the end feel most appropraite.

Design 1. Masks Using the popular colour combinations from my feedback I made the first of my final mask designs, trying to keep the quality of each of my cut outs as high quality as possible.

The contrast between the mask and the back ground was very prominent. These show the more basic mask shapes that would form the basis of my designs simplifying my from my original drawings would lend themselves to the collage medium.

Creating definitive shape for each was key in the overall design. My aims for this project is to be distinctive but without the use of a computer this I feel has been achieved in my designs.

This is a scan of the finished first design, during the making I continued to experiment and play with my designs, testing what I felt worked well and really trying new things all the time. The dynamic feel to this designs and the contrasting colour tones stand out how I wanted them to. The use of varying paper stocks for these designs for me is what really made them stand out, the contrast in the reds compared to blue for example changes the colour to be much more eye catching.

Design 2. Masks This second again uses one of the popular colour combinations from my feedback using much darker colours for the background again in contrast to the bring vibrant tones. The shapes of the features I wanted to be slightly more abstract and loose. I kept the design much more simple looking at making the images as striking and engaging as possible through the use of sharp edges and high contrast colour tones.

This image above is a scan of the final collage I was overall please with the difference in Design 1 and Design 2 this extra level of experimentation when creating my design gave me a lot of freedom to see what worked well at the time and go with it. I think compared to the first design these images are slightly more subtle and the colour tones seem to complement each more effectively. I looked to again simplify the shapes of the masks to make sure each design was different.

Design 3. Masks With this Final Design 3 I began by using the three main colours being blue, green, red and yellow for the background squares but felt that using an additional frame for each, I looked at a multitude of different combinations of mask colours in conjunction with the background and the frames.

This extra frame gave the design another level of detail and would be a interesting change from the other two final designs. After I was pleased with the colours I had selected I then cut out the masks to get a feel for how they look next to the frame and background.

The image above is the high quality scan of this Final Design 3. After the first scan the quality was not clear enough. Scanning the work numerous times to insure the colours were as bright as the original collage. As my work was to be scanned then submitted this was important for the final submission. I didn’t want to loose any of the colour an detail in scanning that I worked so had to create.

The overall quality and image of this third design.

I think the subtle, naive levels of detail along side the graphic frames and colour combinations make for the most engaging and interesting design of the three. Due to this when submitting using this image would hopefully catch the judges attention and be considered for inclusion.

These images show my five final collage images in relation to my my idea on the subconscious, Surrealism and creating a dream like landscape.

Using my feedback on colour combinations as a brief outline I made these much more detailed and refined collages.

During the making I discovered this over lapping of colours for the mountains and sky in the background this was something I felt really gives the designs depth and an additional level of detail. The different colour combinations and shapes needed a lot of working out and experimentation to get the best results.

When scanning the images I had to insure the colours weren't lost and that the scanner didn't have any marks or smudges to best show the tactility of the designs.

The design with the yellow background in contrast with the blue pillars is extremely prominent and eye-catching, the fine details like the mountains in the background and the tops of the pillars colours seem to work well together. This is stood out as the most successful and shows a nice balance of composition throughout. Asking some class mates and tutors which design they felt stood out this yellow back ground design seemed to be highlighted a number of times.

Creating a range of five different designs insured I had covered all the colour combinations and would reveal the best and most appropriate design. This extra level of experimentation in my work for this project has pushed my design much further and I am proud of the level of detail and refinement in my final outcomes.

Within this project my aims from the of set was to create something very different from the briefs I had been working on previously, the brief had very little limitations and offered an opportunity to be as broad in my workings as I see fit. Right from the begging of this project I knew I was going to try and work totally without the use of a computer, doing all my research from books, all my workings and design ideas done in sketch books and any other developments in this analogue format. This allowed my designs to be much more tactile and personal, the imagery I created was inline with this theme. ECM records book ‘Sleeves Of Desire’ was vital in my research, they way they went about creating very intimate and personal designs for records with a distinctive theme throughout. The design opened my eyes to how the designs could be more conceptual and ambiguous yet remaining interesting.

In this project one thing I would highlight as very successful was the pushing of my ideas and how creating a range of ideas seemed to create much more in depth and thought out designs. Taking a concept further in this work was key, pushing every design and putting as much reason behind each design decision as possible was vital in making my work as informed as possible.

If I was to change anything in my designs I would look to possibly send in a physical submission, as my works theme was this tactility and non digital style sending in the final designs as physical submissions would emphasis this. On top of this I would have liked to have experimented with a paint.

As this is a medium I feel confident with I could have seen if painted my designs would be more engaging. Overall this project has really opened my eyes to the world of record covers and how different they can be, I feel my submission shows how my designs have evolved and my design decisions were clear, I feel I have responded to the brief in an interesting all way backed up by in-depth research.

On top of this I really enjoyed the change in working this brief offered.