Preliminary Ideas- BEN RODWELL

Idea 1

To start with I used stock images from google to sketch out preliminary ideas. My approach was to use stock images and Photoshop to create preliminary ideas and chose the basis of my album cover and then recreate any photos or stock images I had used for the final piece. I decided to mock up the front cover of the CD and then once I had designed this I would work on the other panels of the CD and the advert based on the chosen style.

Idea 2

IDEA NO 1. I wanted my album to reflect the duality theme of my music video. I started by taking a screenshot of a close up of the main character's face from my music video, altering the colour hue and adding a title. Although I liked the idea of using the main characters face with an increased saturation and hue intensity to represent the duality of my music video, the title is not very clear and the font doesn't contribute to the aesthetic. The pros of the this design are the eye catching colour and clear link to duality but the cons are that the title is not very clear and takes away from the overall style

Pros: Eye Catching, links to duality and modern looking.

Cons: Title is not clear, pink colour does not reflect style of the music video

Idea 2

Idea 2

IDEA NO.2 I wanted to experiment with radical fonts and see how well they could be used to create a logo and style for the band as well as to represent the duality theme. In this idea I tried filling in the negatives of  the bold sans serif font 'Bebas'. This resulted in a modernistic and original looking font that represented the duality of my music video. Although not extremely easy to read I think that it engages with audiences and forces them to spend time working out what the font says and therefore works effectively at enticing audiences. I then experimented by placing the font on different backgrounds including a black and white photo of an avalanche, a psychedelic combination of colour swirls and a black and white profile of a man's head. I found that keeping the background as simple as possible worked well and that the font looked strongest behind the black and white photos. However I liked the idea of referencing psychedelia on my cover as the music itself has psychedelic influences. The face of the super villain in our music video is a key aspect of the mise en scene throughout and so using a closeup of his face could work well at linking the CD cover and the music video. Using black and white photos highlights the theme of duality through the use of classic, contrasting colours. The black represents the bad and the white the good and together portray the theme of duality. I wanted the overall style of the cover to minimalist and so decided to make the name of the album the same as the band name so the front cover can have as little on as possible. Many famous bands such as The Beatles, Weezer and King Crimson did not include the title of the album on the album to create a minimalist album cover. I have taken inspiration from this and through my preliminary idea brainstorm found that keeping as little on the cover as possible created an aesthetically pleasing and strong design

Pros: Original, creates logo for the band, engaging, links to duality, strong minimalist style

Cons: Font could be difficult to read, background
 needs to be relatively simple

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Idea 3

IDEA 3. I wanted to experiment with using the image of the super villains face from the music video as the basis for the CD cover. I used a close up of the main characters face and increased the intensity and reduced the image to two colour layers: black and white. This resulted in a stark contrasting black and white image that outlined a human face. It had the right balance of ambiguity and clarity; people could decipher the facial features such as the eyes and nose but also could see it was an abnormal, skull like face. Using this image as the basis of the third set of ideas, I wanted to see if I could integrate some sense of psychedelia to the design.  To begin with I used the psychedelic ink swirls as the font fill. While I liked the effect I didn't think tit worked coherently to create an effective style. I felt like it subtracted from the portrayal of duality created

Instead of integrating the psychedelic reference via the text I decided to try and merge it with the facial image. I experimented by replacing either the black or white in the face with the psychedelic colours.Out of the two I felt that keeping the black and replacing the white worked the most effectively.This design portrayed the duality theme well; the black presenting the dull/bad side of a personality and the colour representing the creative/good side. Unlike the other design where the white was kept, this design was clearer and showed the image of a face more effectively to the audience. The issue with this design was that it did not lend itself to having text on. Because of the layout and intensity of the photo I could not find a way of placing font on which did not take away from the overall style. While I could create a super minimalist album with no writing on at all, I felt like my cover needed at least the band name. Another weakness of this design is that it would be difficult for me to recreate the colour swirls I had found on the internet.

Pros: Links to duality, effective and engaging style, right balance of ambiguity and clarity

Cons: Psychedelic colours would be difficult to create, does not allow for aesthetically pleasing placement of text

Idea 4

IDEA 4. For my final Idea I wanted to experiment with just having a font as the cover of my CD. I used a bold sans serif font and then used the psychedelic colours as the fill for the font. I placed this on a plain white background to create a very minimalist design. While I thought this design was eye catching and visually very pleasing, it had no real link to the theme of duality. While the others had used colours and photos to create the portrayal of the theme of duality and thus linking it to the music video, this idea only created links to psychedelia. In addition to this I decided it would be difficult to create 3 other panels and an advert in this design style. Furthermore because it was so simplistic I felt it did not reflect my ability on Photoshop.

Pros: Very strong, minimalist style, simple to create, represents psychedelic influence.

Cons: Overly simplistic, doesn't link to duality, doesn't reflect my Photoshop abilities.


Chosen Idea: Idea 2

I chose this idea as I felt the use of font was interesting and original and gave the CD cover and band as a whole an identity and logo. Additionally it linked effectively to the theme of duality and gave me room for development and creative change. The style is eye catching, engaging and modern and so reflects the musical style of the band.