The Brief: Create crea#ve album covers for the selected Secret 7 songs. They can contain lyrics from the song but not the ar#st’s name or the song name itself.
This year’s Secret 7 songs S729 -‐ Chvrches -‐ Clearest Blue S730 -‐ EJa James -‐ At Last S731 -‐ Jack GarraJ -‐ Worry S732 -‐ The Jam -‐ Art School S733 -‐ John Lennon -‐ Imagine S734 -‐ Max Richter -‐ Dream 3 S735 -‐ Tame Impala -‐ The Less I Know The BeJer
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
FIRST COVER Almost straight away I knew I only wanted to make album cover art for Tame Impala’s The Less I Know The BeJer. I felt a connec#on to it and knew I wanted to center my ideas around the theme of “#me”. For my first sleeve I thought about #me represented in nature – in animals. I started off by drawing buJerflies and moths as they are both known for having short lives. A^er drawing them for a while I felt like I wasn't ge`ng very far with them so I researched more animals and came across a lobster. They can live forever (as far as we know) and they seemed like the perfect animal for this song. I did a few prac#ce sketches and then decided to paint the whole sleeve using a mixture of gouache and acrylic.
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
FIRST COVER FINAL This is the final submiJed piece for one of my album covers. A^er pain#ng it, I took it into Photoshop to add my own handwriJen text and also change the brightness levels. I added the lyrics “I said beJer late than never, just don’t make me wait forever” because it related to my lobster who was wai#ng.
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
SECOND COVER
For my second cover I wanted to think about a different aspect of #me. This #me I thought about our human bodies and the cells inside them. I researched into them and also realised how the layers look like ter#ary layers in the earth. These two thoughts combined and I created my second piece, again using gouache as the main medium.
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
SECOND COVER FINAL Again I took this into Photoshop just to neaten it up a bit and adjust the light levels. It made it brighter and more solid. I also added text onto this one because I felt like it didn’t say enough on its own. I chose the lyrics “is this what you want, is this who you are?” to overlay as I felt that closely related to layers, as it’s o^en underneath that you find out what a person is like.
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
THIRD COVER
For my third cover I wanted it to relate to #me in some way as well, I was in a garden center when I saw a sun garden plate and it got me researching different display plates of the sun which then influenced the third cover I made. It was more surreal than the others so I made sure that I used colours that would pop and contrast. Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
THIRD / FOURTH COVER FINALS
I decided to take my cover into photoshop again but when I was scanning it in, I scanned it in wrong the first #me (In greyscale) which I actually really liked.
Ka#e Wade Secret 7 Brief Deadline 2nd March 2016
I ended up keeping both versions. The tweaked colour version submiJed for Tame Impala and the grey scale being submiJed for Max Richter’s Dream 3 (as the grey felt a lot more dream like and matched that song beJer I felt).