Industry research

I was thinking of covers and I thought I'd have a look at some of my favourites/inspirations. They might not all be clear-cut illustration but all of them sound like what they look like (which is what the best album covers do). I think most of them rely on layout as much as concepts or imagery to make them work. 

The xx - I see you- The album is called I see you and its reflective. I think concepts like this are very good (a bit like the best of Factory records covers)

Beach Boys - This is a back cover - but the monochrome as well as the slightly kitsch look (with the type and the flower) is good.

Betjeman's Banana Blush- gradients, colour palette, photos and layout are all good. Looks like it could have been designed now. I think the way it relates to the music is how unusual it all seems (the elements almost don't quite all fit together.)

Ambition/Franco- These are both reduced down to the basics of the name of the artist, the name of the album and a photo of the artist. They work because they are simple.

Linton Kwesi Johnson/Robert Wyatt- The music is quite different, but they both dry point looking illustration on the front. Both are very political records and the images on the front are also political. They work because they have good illustrations. The Robert Wyatt does the visual equivalent of the kind of play on words he does (but also with the politics), the LKJ one shows the violence, race issues and talking about police that runs throughout the album.

The two designers the are my favourites are Lemi Gharikwo (Fela Kuti album covers) and Peter Saville (Factory records) are not included here I don't any one example stands out to me from them - its more their approach.

Studio Brief 2: Individual Practice

For Studio Brief 2 I decided to do 'Secret 7' Live brief and create work based around that, using the brief as a starting point. As you could submit as many as you wanted I aimed to do 2 versions of 3 of the covers. I ended up doing about 2 for 4 of the covers, however I still don't think that was a big enough aim it didn't feel like a challenge to complete them all. I hoped that the covers themselves would be a starting point for more work (prints, moving image). Although I did a bit of moving image I don't think this happened us much as I would have liked and I think this is probably my biggest regret of the year.

My proposal didn't set out strict enough guidelines and I didn't stick to them as I should have done. I didn't have any big, challenging ideas for a project so it was almost like settling for Secret 7. As time went on I felt that the brief didn't really challenge me and that meant I found it hard to get motivated.

Most of the outcomes seemed to come together so quickly in the spur of the moment, which is probably why I feel like I should have made more. Between these flashes it felt very hard, I was thinking, doing and nothing worked. I usually think I work quickly but I'm beginning to wonder if its just it takes a long time to build up an idea I'm happy with and then the visuals almost force themselves out quickly. Trying harder and really pushing idea building is probably important in getting through periods with no motivation; but also getting burnt out is easy. Hopefully all this means I've learnt when to ask for help and asking for help rather than settling for being lost.

The brief felt like a bit of a step back compared to other work I've done this year. It is a bit of a mixed bag; because although I'm fairly happy with what I have done, I know it could have been more, with more applications.

I think the most successful was the 'I'm not down' fists outcome. This was an idea that I had and couldn't get it to work. Felt like I really pushed it and developed it to a stage where I was happy with it. The 'Lover, You Should of Come Over' cinema collage came together quickly but I think it looked like a real outcome, not just a loose idea. The classic fore-ground, mid-ground, background collage is used a lot but I think this one worked quite well. The 'Damaged' cover came together almost spontaneously. Went from idea to finished in about 40 mins. Made a collage, photocopied it, cut it up then photocopied in a single colour. I was quite happy with it. Following on from the long build up, I was listening to the song quite regularly for probably a few days before the collage came out. 'Lover, you should of come over' 2 I bought two postcards and liked how they worked next to each other (again, quick) and I thought they worked with the song. For 'Castles Made of Sand' I had the idea for the castle, developed it, liked the image but I'm not sure I fully developed it as far as I could have. Finally, the 'I'm not down' tower blocks came from an idea of putting the punk aesthetic of The Clash with building work/architecture I thought of when I listened to the song. I think its fairly successful, but I felt a bit weird about it as it was collaged entirely digitally.

Didn't work with hand processes as much, I moved toward putting things together on screen. Think this meant sketchbook work went out the window a bit. I think sketch booking is important for developing concepts even just through play. It was almost as if my sketch booking and actually making became two separate things.

Studio Brief 1

The two briefs I chose were the Hookworms brief and the Stephen Hawking penguin brief. I worked fairly quickly on these briefs.

For Hookworms, I mostly used found images and photocopying, which meant I ended up with quite a lot of outcomes and quite a lot of variations. I think most of the posters lacked communication and mostly were just a found image. Of the outcomes, I think one or two worked well. I think I concentrated more on making sure the type worked with the images, mostly using handmade type (which I did to go with the D.I.Y sort of feel.

Initially I started making a hand-made bubble type which was warped. This type, warped in different ways was used on lots of the posters; as the sketchbook page it was on had the other information on I added in a photo (from a Russian academic book) and I thought it weirdly worked compositionally. Some of the other posters use a photo from an old book of the lake district; which is warped by playing around with photocopies in different ways. At times Hookworms felt like I was making things in a formulaic way (get an image, lay text around it.)

I approached the brief in quite a loose way, just aiming to play around with layout and text and somehow most of the finals didn't feel 'substantial' enough. Which is maybe down to the way I made the posters up as it went along rather than planning and then making them.

 I think in a future brief with limits on submissions this would be different and I would have to decide which my favourite(s) is. 

For Stephen Hawking I didn't do very much development and only really ran with one of the first ideas I had. I think this was ok as I was mostly focusing on the Hookworms brief. Like for Hookworms, I focused on type and layout a fair amount. I used type in an abstract way, using horizontal type vertically for the title.

I was fairly happy with my cover, but I found things like laying out the blurb quite hard, and I think if I'd thought about it and spent longer on it, I could have made it much better (I didn't stress too much about the problems I encountered)

For this studio brief I worked digitally a lot, to the extent of relying on it. I think this was down to the quick briefs and wanting to do them quickly. Digital can be very useful but think its important to keep it as a tool to hold on to the handmade feel of my work. I think for both of these briefs I continued with some of the momentum I had from 503. I felt like I created quite a lot of work in the time.