Initial Poster Ideas

These are my 10 initial ideas for my music festival poster:

My favourite ideas are the top left on the first page, top right and the top right on the second page. I would like to develop these further to find out which one works and looks best.  

Photoshop experiments

These are all effects that I have created in Photoshop by following/watching tutorials that I found on the internet.

Explosion:

Sound wave:

Smoky Typography:

Electric swirls:

Primary Photographs

These are some of my photographs that I took at the Summertime ball, of the stage and crowd.

Primary imagery

I used a range of different materials, such as chalk, pen, pencils and fine liners on this page to help me get an idea of what style I like/dislike.

I used a black fine liner to draw these images that relate to my music festival theme.

Finally I experimented with some different typography style and with different names that I could use for the name of the music festival.

Mindmap

Secondary imagery

Luke Lucas analysis

This piece of typography is made by Luke Lucas for a book cover, the name of it is 'Distro'. Luke Lucas is a 36 year old freelance artist, from Australia, working as an art director, illustrator, designer and typographer. From 1996 to 1999 he was a co founder/co creator of Fourinarow magazine and from 1999 to 2011 was a co founder/creative director of Lifelounge. I chose to analyse this piece as I want to use some typography within my final outcome, especially for my poster and mail out. 

I have looked at the artists website to further my understanding of him and his work. The theme of the work is gadgets/technology/computers, I know this because its a book cover for 'ways to please a geek' and the typography is made out of cables and wires. The name of the work 'Distro' could be referring to a computing website called distrowatch, a set of software components or Linux operating system. This represents the theme of the work as it is a computing term. The artist has got inspiration from looking at computers and choosing to make the typography out of wires, USB cables and LED lights. 

The typography has been made on the computer using vector graphics, most likely in Adobe Illustrator. Using tools such as the pen tool, shapes and line tool to create the basic structure of the typography and then applying different gradients, colours and effects to make the final piece. The artist has mainly used colours that are associated with computers, such as black, grey, red and white but has added in some pink to brighten it up. The background colour is kept black so that the typography placed on top stands out so it is easy to read and so there are no clashing colours. The artist has also used texture on the black background, that looks like a speaker or computer fan to show the theme of computers. 

I chose to analyse this piece of typography as it looks stylish, stands out and represent the theme of the book very well. I would also like to use a similar type of typography for my own work. At first I thought the work was a poster for something music related, but after reading it found out it was about computers. I really like the work as it looks very professional and well made, the only down side is that it may be hard to read. It has inspired me to create my own piece of typography for my work that resembles the theme really well and clearly.

Here are some more examples of Luke Lucas' work:

Ken Taylor Analysis

This print is a T-shirt design made for any forty x t-world website by Ken Taylor. Ken Taylor is an illustrator and designer from Australia who works within the music industry and is known for his rock posters. He started off creating posters and album artwork for local bands and in 2006 started full time work on music based artwork. I chose to analyse this piece because I would like to use something similar for my posters and t-shirt design and also because the artists work relates to my project.

I looked at Ken Taylor's website to further my understanding of the work and to learn more about the artist himself. The theme of the work is grunge clothing, I can tell because the artist style is rock music and grungy looking illustrations. 

It was most likely hand drawn first and then edited in photoshop or illustrator to make the final vector image design. The artist has used a black background to make the illustration stand out and so there is a strong contrast. 

Personal Project Brief

Personal project mindmap

Moodboard

Concert merchandise/advertising idea:

one two three four five six seven eight nine

Gift box idea:

one two three four five six seven

Initial Ideas sheets

Brief

Evaluation

Our brief for this project was to choose a musician or band to produce an album for. We had to create a logo, piece of packaging, album booklet and CD design for our chosen artist. We had to use the experiments/techniques from the AS-A2 project to help us come up with ideas. My chosen artist was Rihanna and her album 'Talk That Talk'. To come up with this idea I created a mind map of different artists and music genres. I then experimented with a few of my favourite choices in the AS-A2 project and from them I chose that Rihanna was the best option for me.

Once I decided who i was creating the album for I could start thinking about what I wanted to do. The first task was to create a logo for Rihanna that would be featured on the CD case. I created two pages of initial ideas using lots of different materials and techniques, I then analysed them and chose the ones I wanted to develop further. Next I followed lots of different tutorials from YouTube to help me learn how to create a stylish, professional looking logo. From all these experiments I was able to come up with a final design, using one of the shapes from my initial logo ideas. Now I had to research analyse lots of different CD packaging, create mind maps and mood boards to give me inspiration for my own album idea. From looking at the Jakebox design i knew I wanted to try and create a similar design, something with a unique, cleverly made mechanism to give it the wow factor. I also experimented with using different packaging materials and ideas, such as newspaper, fabric and origami. Since I was still stuck for ideas I decided to look at different CD packages that I found around my house. This is where I came up with the idea of having a mechanism that allows two sides to pull out together at the same time, I later found out this was called a 'push n pull card'. To create the surface design I practised with lots of different techniques in Photoshop and Illustrator by following YouTube tutorials. My first idea was that I wanted to have an exploded effect of Rihanna's face, made up of squares. When I was looking for a tutorial for this I came across a smashed glass effect that I liked a lot more. After Experimenting with this idea I decided to us it for my final design.

Jakob Skarin inspired the final outcome for my packaging as I wanted to create a similar innovative design to his. Jeff Zoet inspired my final album artwork and surface design. I decided to use the smashed glass effect as it was very powerful and I felt that it related to my artist as she has a lot of attitude.
Jakebox:

I think the album artwork and surface design worked very well as it suits my chosen artist, Rihanna very well. This is because its has a powerful, urban and stylish effect. I am definitely happy with my final outcome.

To improve my outcome I would need to edit my album booklet. This is because I had to take out some of the pages at last minute as it was too thick. To change this I could try and print pages double sided so less paper is needed. I would also like to make it easier to open the CD packaging, possibly by adding tabs for the customer to pull.

Overall I think the project went well, I enjoyed creating the album and would like to create more packaging in the future.

Final Product

CD packaging closed:

To improve this I would like to add magnets or something to keep it shut.

Back cover:

Front cover opened:

When I constructed the CD case I realized that I had left the inside of the cover empty, which made it look unfinished and plain. So I added in the back cover of the booklet design, as I felt it would fit in well and have a good effect on the work.

Side pulled out:

CD:

When it came to printing out my original CD design it didn't look very effective and I decided I wanted to have a more complex design. So I changed the clipping mask image to the same as the album artwork, but only a small section of it. This is so you can see part of the girls side, the centre of the smashed glass and a bit of the text without it looking the same as the front cover. 

CD booklet:

When I printed out my booklet pages and put them all together I found out that it didn't fit into my CD case firstly because it was to wide but also because it was to thick. This meant that I had to adjust the size of the pages on the computer, reprint it and also take some of the pages out so that it would be thin enough to fit in the case.