CD Packaging

The new brief has asked us to design and create a CD package for a single. I consider the look for a CD package almost as important as the music itself; bad cover normally means bad music. With the rise of downloads, it's a worry that CDs will disappear.

Above is the cover for Bombay Bicycle Club's 2011 album, A Different Kind of Fix. The cover itself represents the band entirely. The illustration gives a feeling of tradition, which shows the album's kind of folk feel. The bright colours represent the youth and excitement of the band and album.

  

 

The next 2 albums are both by jack Penate. The one on the left, Matinee was his 2007 debut. The cover itself tells the listener that Penate will be fun and energetic. Just like the Bombay Bicycle Club album, the colours represent youth and excitement, and I think the cover is an advert for the man himself aswell as his music. I was really disappointed to see his 2009 follow up, Everything is New to look so uninteresting and unappealing. The album is similar to the first, with fast temp, exciting music, but with a few slower songs thrown in. Without the text, i would expect to see a cover like this in either the classical or easy listening section. The simple plain text, looks like it's aimed at a older audience.

The album on the left is Cage The Elephant self-titled debut album. The painting was done by Clint Colburna and the design by brianne kumelos. Once again the bright colours show young and energy. The appealing point of these covers is the way they are made. Cage The Elephant seem to care more about the appearance and want people to remember the albums. Each album comes with a cardboard clipcase, and the 'Thank You, Happy Birthday' case has the album title cut into it.

Here are 2 of my personal favourites. The being KIngs of Leon's very first EP, Holy Roller Novercaine, and the right being the band's very first single, entitles What I Saw. I think the covers have so much character, they both give the feeling of being in the deep south of America listening to rock n roll. This being exactly what these CDs contained. My favourite part of the covers, is the title. The typeface is really unique from anything as mainstream in the early 2000s, when these were first released. Each cover only uses 1 image, but I think this is really effective because it works as a logo or symbol for the album, so whenever the cherries you think of this EP. The way the Holy Roller Novocaine cover is printed and manufactured is also very effective. It's made as a digipack with a cardboard cover. The cover looks asif it was meant to be a clean white but has been stained by some sand to give an impression of age.
               Unfortunately, as the band grow, and the music became more mainstream, the album covers slipped. In 2008, Only by the Night was released followed by Come Around Sundown in 2010.

Only by the Night doesnt give the feeling of a Southern Rock band singing from true stories about the past. It gives an impression of a band discovering the computer and technology to make music. The typeface used helps to give this impression and the green background seems to give me an impression of nature. The cover doesn't really give an impression of the actual music on this album. The Come Around Sundown cover seems to give a better impression of setting and it links with the music better. The main problem I have with this cover is the link between the typeface and image. The picture clearly shows a beach and the colours show the setting sun, whilst the typeface gives me the impression of 1940/50s New York Broadway.

  The cover above I think is a great example of how little you use can be so effective. The most important part of the cover, the band name is what the eye is drawn to followed by the album name. The typeface used tells me personally that they are a guitar band, and i think by using no image, it kind of gives an impression of arrogance. It tells me that you don't need a picture of us, you should no who we are. Definitely one of my favourite albums and album covers.

Secondary Research

In continuation to the Primary Research brief, we have been asked to look into a certain type of footwear we find interesting. I have chosen the football boots as my footwear.

The main purpose of the football boot is grip and stability on the pitch and nowadays boots have a variety of changeable studs and blades designed for different pitches and weather types.

The first evidence of the existence of a boot especially for football, was found in the 1500s and were found to belong to Henry VIII. Football then lost popularity until the late 1800s where the game remerged along with the first mass produced boot. The boot was all leather with 6 studs, and they stayed this way until the mid 1900s.

example of an early football boot.




As the years passed, different manufacturers appeared with new designs and unique features, but none of these really challenged the dominance of adidas and Puma. In 1995, the first Adidas Predator was released, this boot has gone on to massive success, and is still being redeveloped and re-released nowadays. The main boot manufacturers now are Adidas, Puma and Nike, although smaller companies have a big say in the market.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xiEzBniB88 - History of the Adidas Boot.

the latest Adidas Predator.
http://soccerreviews.com/news/history-of-the-adidas-predator/
here is a in-depth history of the Predator.



The future of football boots
Football boots are now starting to be aimed at certain players and roles. A Canadian company called Concave have released a boot that increases the 'sweet spot' of the ball by 400% and stats have proved that this improve the power and accuracy of a strike.

Concave boot

Primary Research

The brief has asked us to look at shoes and find an illustrator/designer we like the style of. I have come across a Yorkshire artist called Mark hearld. He studied at both the Glasgow School and Art and the Royal Collage of Art, before graduating as an illustrator. he has taken inspiration from Edward Bawden, John piper and Picasso.

This is my favorite piece by Hearld. he tends to use a variety of materials in his artwork and this is no exception. To create the buildings in the background he has used newspaper.

In addition, we were asked to photograph a range of different footwear in a variety of backgrounds. Here are some of my favourite images ;

Explaining to a Martian

The brief asked us to create a piece of infographics for a Martian to understand. From the list of subjects, I decided to focus on a hair dryer. I started the project by drawing simple human figures, I used the far right characters for my project.

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After decided on my characters, I started drawing very simple layouts and ideas.

For the next stage, I upped the level and detail within the designs. By doing this, I got a few ideas to start developing. My early ideas all included lots of arrows which I thought were taking the attention away from the images. At the bottom of the page, I have started using different ways of showing which direction to go in.

I continued developing an idea, and started to add in colour. I needed a way of showing the passing of time whilst the hair dryer is on. I choose to use a blue and orange to show the heat of the dryer building up, I have also used a rising sun to show the morning passing.

When I reached this stage, I felt the layout wasn't working as well as it could. At the bottom of this page, I have started to follow a different composition.

I felt that this was looking a lot better, and by using colour, I decided on my final piece.

Variations on a theme

The asked asked us to fill 100 boxes with different views and uses for a certain item. My item was a traffic cone.

Close Cropping

I have come across a photographer called Neil Downie. He won a competition at the end of 2010 for his photgraphy across Vietnam and the picture below is his winning photograph.

In this photo, by cropping the photo across, he has given the impression of width. The boats in the photo are the darkest parts, therefore the eye is immediately drawn to them before you notice the background. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a lot of Neil downie's work.

In the same competition, Capt, Jack Leggett came third with this photograph. By using a pillar crop, he shows the height of the columns and the depth of the corridor, giving a completely different aspect to the image above.

Little Boxes - The Tactile Word

As a continuation of my research, i started to look into Post-Modernist designers and artist, and especially British artist, Damien Hirst. Hirst has received a lot of praise and criticism for his work over his career, mainly due to some of the choice of materials he has used. A number of his most famous pieces contain animals, and I find these incredibly interesting to look at, but they still make me feel like its slightly cruel, taking a wild animal out of it's habitat and exhibit it for everyone to see. 

The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living (1991).









I find this the most interesting out of all of Damien Hirst's pieces. He had a Tiger Shark caught by fisherman, and had it sent to him before placing it a tank full of formaldehyde. The Shark had to be replaced in 2006 after the original started to decay. This leads to the question, Is this still the same piece of artwork ?. The replacement shark had formaldehyde injected into the body of the animal to help preserve it.

 Above are pieces by Hirst including a cow, a sheep cut in half and a unicorn.