CD Cover Task

CD Cover Task

1. 
  Go to wikipedia.org, choose English, and click Random article.
      The first random article you get is the name of your band.
2.   Go to quotationspage.com and click Random Quotes.
      The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page
      is the title of your first album.
3.   Go to yahoo.com and search “random image” or flickr.com . The third picture –
      no matter what it is – will be your album cover.
4.   Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5.   Resolution: 72 ppi, 768 x 768 pixels, Format: jpg, step 10 or 12
6.   Name: yours (e.g.: johannes.jpg)

I think that this is a really interesting task for me to do considering how much I love music and have a vast collection of CDs. I have never really considered type well before but after the lectures I have had at the summer school in Berlin I felt that it was something I should try. This task also encourages me to explore photoshop further which is something I am still not confident with! It is different to work with someone else's imagery and I hope that this will help me transfer elements to my design in the future.

1.Rich Lake.not work as expected

 I wanted to turn this into a psychedelic style album cover, I thought this was fitting. Therefore I wanted the lettering to stand out more from the background with a coloured outline. Neither me nor the teacher knew how to do this is Photoshop so he suggested that I moved over to InDesign...

I figured out that if I turned my original image to multiply, everything lighter than the would be replaced. This was an extremely easy way of adding yellow to the cover.

This is so far on InDesign... I need to figure out the letters and I am thinking about creating a border/frame.

I am not sure that I like this result. I think that I might go back to the black and white image and maybe add some colourful flowers or a pschadellic pattern onto with my Wacom tablet.

Kramies

version is complete

I imagine this album to be an obscure and mellow artist (a guy with a guitar) who people either love or hate... Someone a bit like Elbow... This random image is quite cool and perfect for an album cover image because it is quickly and random, like someone who is trying to be indie and cool might chose.

I went with the broccoli themed colours but wanted to create an automated effect with the text because the words are quite robotic.

Electrologica

rinse my mouth out

I wanted to try and make the background of the image like different blocks of colour to insinuate an electronic feel. I found that this colour scheme didn't work and that it interfered with the clarity of the face too much. 

I liked that the face was on one vertical half but the pipe goes into the second half as this makes the face not seem out of place.

I found that if I highlighted the album name over the top of the squares that it created this interesting textured, darker stripy pattern which I liked so I screen-shotted it. I then looked at other electronic music album covers and found that the font they used was something similar to that I have chosen for the album title. However looking back maybe I should have them the other way around.

I felt that although the black and white contrast was interesting the white got lost so I decided to add a frame to the image which I think works well considering the line work of the face and pipe.

infrared spectroscopy

 fight for equality

This picture and the album title go really well together... It is a picture of a strange human being with a map of the world insinuation to respect people of all dimensions, from different backgrounds and cultures. I am lucky with this combination!

I imagine this band to be quite hippy and well travelled, including some Sitar or something similar, and that they produce and quirky experimental sound...wigging out and playing wacky chords on the guitar and keyboard.

 Furthermore I thought it would be easy to add some Infra-red into the mix through the eye sight, changing the iris colour to red. This didn't make enough of a statement though...

I thought it would be a good contrast to use so fat lines so draw around the eyes in red. I started off with rays of infra-red radiating/going into the eyes and then thought I could add attention to the sight by outlining the eyes some more but adding some off balance through the uneven eyebrows.

 I then thought that perhaps adding some tone into the image could be a good thing by using a darker shade (to not add too much colour I took the colour scheme off the mouth as the image already has lots of colours). But I decided that this was too much and that it was more striking and impacting to had less lines.

Then came the positioning of the text. I decided that the type would work well at the top of the page, filling it all away for the band name. I then struggled with the positioning of the album title. It didn't look right in the centre as then everything was too cemetrical. I thought maybe it could work aligned with the lips because it looked too balanced at the bottom corner. 

I thought that the font should be simple and clear, especially as the album title is such a bold statement but that it should have some character to it.

However I decided that it worked best placed underneath the title in the corner. Partly this balanced out the line work of the left eyebrow but also because the weight is at the top then and it breaks up the red of the band name and the eyes (which is also balanced at the bottom with the lips...dividing the image horizontally into quarters). I thought that the album title should be in white so that it stood out but also picks the white out of the eyes more.