My Individual Print Designs

For my idea for our album cover, I wanted to go with the theme of the artist being unknown (so no photos of him etc), and also with the theme of having an abstract design, like artists of a similar genre of music to ours have done in the past such as Boards of Canada that I researched previously. Building on this idea, I had the thought of incorporating newspaper clippings of letters to spell out the name "Lawrence King" and maybe the album name, and also perhaps incorporating the themes of traffic and traffic lights that is present in our pop promo, with the time-lapsed cars stopping and starting at traffic lights as the tempo of the music changes.

One thing I was sure of when I started trying out designs for it was that I wanted to have simple, clutter free design, using very high quality images to give a professional and sophisticated look.

Front cover ideas:

The image below is my favorate cover design from the ones I created. The typeface and images I used make it immediatly obvious who's album it is. The photo I took of a red trafficlight (which is internationally recognisable as the colour which means stop), and the newspaper clippings that spell out the word stop, were very large high quality images at about 3000 x 1000 pixels. I then resized these down (whilst constraining the proportions so they remained the right shape) so that they were the right size for the CD cover. This image has multiple layers for each image and text, so it was easy for me to edit a particular object without effecting the whole image. I then used the "stroke" effect (in the Blending Options menu) to give a black outline 2 pixels wide around the image to make it look neat and professional.

Back cover:



If we were to go with my CD Cover design for our final piece and made a magazine cover for it, I would want to have a very similar design to the CD cover, but instead in an A5 size, with a longer quote at the bottom from a music magazine or similar giving praise to Lawrence King or the album, as well as a release date for the album.

Jess's Print Designs

Jess's Entry

As editor I'm pretty busy right now and I don't have too much time to experiment with Photoshop and create a whole digi-pack idea. However, Ive had a few goes creating just a rough album cover. By doing so it means that I am in a better position to support Nicola with the final designs should she need it. Please ignore any borders or mistakes around edges of the design- I saved screenshots in .tiff on the Mac and had to convert them to .jpeg on windows to upload to blogger and this has meant a few errors occurred.

Whilst Nicola and Maya are concentrating on Urban and outdoor shots, I decided to go a little 'crazier'. I shot a series of photographs using nature but tyring to bring in fun elements, after being inspired by Four Tet's album designs. The above picture is a leaf of a rubber plant with strategically place smarties!

Firstly I used the Magic Wand tool on Photoshop to cut out the grey background as it was quite dull. I also decided to flip the leaf as i thought it was more logical for the leaf to be that way around. I put on the text that I would need,- artist name and album name. I use the text bend tool to fit 'From the Earth' around the leaf.

To further progress the design I used the magic want tool and eraser tool to make a better cut-out around the leaf as the 1st edit still had some of the grey background remaining. I also changed the background colour to a subtle cream- many brighter colour didn't work and made it look quite amateur. I decided to move the text onto the leaf and changed the font style as I believe the 2 font styles were too conflicting before. If i were to complete this idea I would look into font styles more and add bar codes, copyrights and promotional stickers etc.

Another design I played around with was just the smarties on their own. I think the concept is eye catching and something that would make you pick the album up- and also remember it. The original photograph was the similar to the finished design but I just had to alter image size and canvas size to make it an appropriate size for the album cover. If I had more time I would have cut the background out- however this proved too problematic when I first tried- and added logos etc.

Nicola's Print Designs

Nicola's Entry

My initial ideas for the digipack were to show the contrast betweet nature and urban life. I took various photos of sunsets and then used photo shop to contrast the colours to make the sunset stand out, for the urban photos i changed the shutter speed on my camera to create the effect of rushing traffic.

Original Image

For this Digipack design i used a computer style font to show the electronica side of the music and i used the sunset picture to show the nature influences that inspire Lawrence.

I decide that night would look good in white and i placed it on the black part of the digipack, i later decided that it didn't look right her so i moved it to fit in with Lawrence's name.

I then tried out a different font to see if this worked better i decided against it as i didn't feel that it worked as well as the original font, i also moved the album name into the artist name and i felt this gave a good look and feel to the digipack.

With this digipack i tried changing the colours to see is they would stand out more and i tried bue and as you can see it blends into the background.

This was my last idea but i still wasn't happy as although i liked the way the album title and artist name are positioned i still felt that the album name need to stand out more. I put the copyright information in white on the black part of the background as it made it stand out and i used white for the song tracks as this went with the style that i was going for and i didn't want to overload the digipack with colours.

Print Ad Ideas

Original Image

I took lots of photos for the print ad and i thought this one may be nice to use as it shows the artist is a anonymous way which fits in with our genre as the artists are usually faceless, this photo also has the rushing traffic which ties in with the themes of your pop promo and didipack.

I decided to use the same font as the digipack to help tie the two together and i used the same arrangement of "Lawrence King" and "night" to again tie the print ad to the digipack. I found that with the text on top of this picture the print ad became to busy and i decided it would be nicer to use a simpler image.

Original Image

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I then found this picture which i thought summed up my idea as it was abstract like other album covers in this genre but it also had the traffic theme that follows through the promo and the digipack. After this i started to change the font colours to see which looked best, black stands out the most in some places for example in the album/artist title some white was need to make it pop. i tried other colours such as bright green to give a computer theme to it and i also tried red to go with the colour of the rushing traffic but they got lost against the background.

As you can see from this example i was trying out different colours and her i was trying our green and i didn't work as it didn't fit in with the print ad at all. i was also experimenting with the text placement here,i knew i wanted the date in the bottom left corner and the album/artist title in the top right corner but i was trying to figure out the best places to put the quotes from magazines and celebrities i wanted them to go along with the traffic but be cause of the colour they didn't fit.

As you can see from this idea, i changed the font to red and this still didn't pop so i decided against this font,

Production Meeting 7

Learning to use Photoshop was frustrating but we eventually discovered that it was a very powerful tool when harnessed properly. Nicola had now complete the first draft of our album cover using both images of nature and city life. We wanted to create a link between the video and the album design and the inclusion of lights and traffics helps with this. The nature image on the front has had the colours altered to appear artificial and more 'electronic'. For the inside image Nicola experimented with exposure time. Using a busy road she increased the exposure time to create the blurring of the lights which give the appearance of fast moving traffic. We are particularly happy with this.

Editing of the pop promo is nearing completion but has hit some errors. A problem with the Macs effected the whole class and resulted in some footage dropping frames or footage becoming jerky and clipped. Unfortunately we do not have the original footage to re-capture to resolve this problem, but as explained it is through no fault of our own. We will try and reduce the damage caused by using alternative footage that is unaffected. Luckily Maya shot quite a few take of the same scenes so we should be able to find some footage that is good to use.

Features of A CD Cover

Here are the features that may be included on a CD Cover:

Front Cover...

Band name
Album/song name
Promotional stickers

Back Cover...

Track listing
Barcode
Web address
Record company name
Trademarks
Digital technology logos

Factors To Consider When Developing Our Print Advert and Album Cover

Title & Typeface
The title often dominates for obvious reasons. But we should also consider the type/style of the typeface and font, and the colours used for it.

• Title or main font and typeface on the text.
• Size(s) of the text • Positioning of the font and typeface
• Type of font and typeface used
• Colour(s) of the typeface(s)
• Any logos or distinctive graphics used

Copy and Anchorage (Written Language)
Tag-lines often accompany adverts or copywriting for products. They may also have acclaim and reviews on albums or products. There might also be a website address so you can find out more about the product.

• Any prominent tags or slogans and your interpretation of these
• What is the layout/format of the text? • Consider MES: Lighting, props, costume, performance.posture, location.
• Image photography. Consider framing, camera angle, shot size, MS, CU etc
• Any intertextuality in the images(s). Borrowings from other media texts.

Representation
Who is featured in the text? Are they well known stars? Are they a key selling point for the text? We should also consider representation of the people featured in the text. Look for archetypes, stereotypes and generic types, and any attempts at realism. Remember who your target audience are and the representations need to appeal to them. Consider age, gender, class, race, and media forms & language used to create representations and the values that are attached to these representations.

Genre
We must consider whether our advert suggests a genre of music, as this will help us to define the target audience of the industry behind the adverts. Also, we should decide how clear the genre is going to be in the text and what generic elements we will use.

Narrative
Will the text contain a suggested storyline, sometimes known as a narrative image, that will draw the audience's interest to the text? Sometimes the text will tease us with questions creating a mystery or an enigma. This image may be backed or aided by a tagline or some copywriting such as "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water."

Institution
The institution behind the band needs to be considered. Are they on a huge label and trying to sell the artist to the widest possible audience or a tiny independent label where the band will have more control?

Ideology
What is the ideology and the messages and values we want to project? This could be the idea of the hero, good versus evil, capitalism, true love, ideas towards the typical family, youth and vibrancy etc. Audience A very important part of developing our print pieces are who our target audience are, and profile them and give reasons for the decisions we make on our target audience. We must think about demographics, socio-economics, VALS, labels, and also our audience size and how we will appeal to them using media language.

Homosexuality in Music Videos

Jessica researched the subject of homosexuality in music videos:

Our narratives centres around Girl A and Girl B who cross paths and begin a relationship. Although we originally intended for the relationship to form between a girl and boy, the availability of actors has meant we had to consider other alternatives. However, this has gave us the opportunity to venture into raising issues through our music video, i.e the acceptability of homosexuality within the music industry. Although socially homosexuality is now widely accepted, its is still not seen often in music videos. I feel the decision to go ahead with this narrative within our music video is in-line with the progressive thinking that I discovered in my research for electronic music videos.

History

In 1981 after the emergence of MTV the popularity and volume of music videos increased drastically. At this time homosexuality in music videos was few and far between. However a growing number of artists sporting the androgynous image such as Annie Lennox and openly gay artists such as Boy George introduced the issue into their music videos. However this did not represent the average homosexual person as the character were often over dramatized.



One exception was Bruce Springsteen. The video above was for his track Tougher than the Rest. Couples are shown kissing throughout the video, with gay and lesbian couples featured alongside heterosexual couples and this projects the correct image of homosexual relationships- no different from all the rest! Many Rock 'n' Roll artists used lesbianism in a derogatory way in the late 80's/90's. Instead of promoting sexual differences positively they were often glorified and for entertainment purposes. Women often shown stripping, kissing and getting intimate featured strongly and a feminist reading of this is that it is purely for a mans entertainment.



The emergence of t.A.T.u (Russian short hand for this girl loves that girl) glamorised lesbianism in a way that some may criticise as not being beneficial to the cause. The above video is for their no.1 hit All The Things She Said and features the romance of 2 girls and kissing throughout. Some praised the video for putting lesbians into the mainstream, and the cinematography of the video- showing girls behind bars etc- accurately portrayed the struggle of lesbian couples. However the video also received a huge backlash as the girls are in school uniform and the fact that the are both heterosexual in real life means that the video was just to entertain the male population. More recently artists such as Lady GaGa have fought for equal rights for homosexual and transgendered couple as displayed in her video for Telephone.