Evaluation

Evaluation

Brief: 

To create an album artwork for a band, musician or compilation CD. within this, I had to design and make a logo, packaging, album booklet and label for your my chosen album.

To come up with the ideas for this project, I did some brain storms of many different artists, bands, musicians etc.. From then on, I had to decide which artist I should use for my album artwork.For each album, I needed to  find out what their genres were so that I could get a better understanding of the music and the imagery that it gives off. Their music is the most crucial element and it will also have to link with how the album artwork is presented.

The creative Journey 

starting the project was mostly experimenting and find out new ways to present art work. For the first  week or so, there was a lot of experiments. The experiments were about music for example, instruments were used as an object and my task was to use a certain technique to draw this instrument. 

I tried blind drawing, where I had to close my eyes and draw the objects previously shown. This technique was extremely hard as you only had your hands and an image in your mind. Another experiment was single line drawing, this is using one line to draw the object and you can't take the pencil off the page which then negates the concept of "single line drawing", the line had to be continuous. compared to the blind drawing, this task was easier and I also enjoyed it, I found a new technique to present images now. I like the messy, draft look of images, it makes it seem more real so this technique is one of my favourites.

Another one of my preferred techniques was doodling. The artist Billie Jeans who did a Nike Vandal poster about a shoe really inspired me to create my own image about music. I created my own image using a keyboard and objects around it relating to music and items I liked. His work is truly, I adore his doodles. I also looked into other artist like Rob Ryan who is good with prints and paper cuts. 

Inspiration 

Packaging - many research went into looking at unique CD package for my album. I wanted mu package to be unique, something different to normal packages. I wanted my outcome to impress my customers. After a long search, I found pop up packages to be rare to use for CD cases. I thought I would look into this even more, so I looked into the Jake Box a special type of CD case that has a free standing CD as soon as you open it. The creator for this was Jakob Skarin. I really liked the idea of my CD to be free standing. It's a modern approach to holding CDs.
http://jakebox.com/
I then searched for more CD packages with these features and I came across this.

 The concept of the CD rising up wait my main attractions to this package. It seemed modern and it was different to normal CD cases which just click into a groove.









Along the way I also found an interesting pop out case.

I wanted to incorporate  this mechanism into the above  case

Front Cover Design

For my front cover, I wanted to use my previous experiment on stencil  as my basis for my front cover. 

this is the image I created before and I wanted to use this idea for my front cover .

I got idea from a famous painting of Marilyn Monroe as a pop art work. The artist was name Andy Warhol. 

This was my first attempt on making my front cover, I took a picture of my self again the microphone and took a part of my face so that there isn't much showing. It gives off the effect of mystery. Although, the colours within this wasn't appealing, this didn't reflect on the music that Bruno Mars writes.

 So after many more experiments I changed the colour scheme from brown and green to blue and yellow.
This was the final outcome. I also added a yellow transparent shine to the end of the microphone.

On the right is the back of the CD case. I used the same messy design.



Inside 


For the inside of the CD case, I wanted to keep the colour scheme the same so that it stays consistent. It's the colour is consistent then the it will look more professional.

Here is the net with the designs implemented on it.

The Booklet
 The booklet for this is small, I wanted it to be small so that it fits well within the CD case.  

     These are the final outcome for my booklet. As you can see the booklet contains some imagery and lyrics. It's a small hand book which only contains three songs I liked.
The back has the list of the songs and also a bar code to make it look official.    







Poster 
For the poster, I wanted to make it very special. Many experiments went into deciding what do use to make the poster, I wanted an icon image to represent one of my favourite songs by Bruno Mars. So I used the Moon as my iconic image and then edited with other images of me and the stars behind. This was my final outcome.

 The lack of quality was down to the printer as the darker parts didn't show up properly. But the original computerized image is on the right.

I think that this has worked well together, the whole concept of the moon, me holding the guitar and also the neon font on the bottom right.

What has gone well?

I think everything has gone to plan. The original design for the CD case stayed the same, no adjustments were made due to faults of errors. The overall progress for this project was good, the outcome came out the way I wanted it to. I am very happy with my art work I made my self, the use of software really helped me develop my ideas. For example my front booklet cover image, I really enjoyed creating that, the idea worked perfectly which I liked. Also I love the poster I made, it looks original, the picture of me holding the guitar also worked well with the help of Adobe Illustrator.

What I could have Improved?I think that I could have improved my booklet. The lack in time responded to the quality of finish for the booklet. I think that if I had more time, I would have improved the quality and be more detailed with the overall finish.
Also, the back of the CD case, the quality wasn't up to my standards, I think that the images weren't very clear.
The security for my CD case is a bit too strong as it can damage the case after a long term use.

Conclusion:
Overall, I found this project challenging as everything within the CD case had to be made from scratch, the booklet, CD design, poster. I found the tasks was demanding but I managed to work through it and time my progress so that I don't lose track or go off course. Also, the lack of time added more pressure to my designing and experimenting process. I felt like I didn't have much time on my hand especially near the dead line. This made me alter a few things due to lack of time, trying to minimise as much time on designing and making the final outcome.
Although,  I learnt new techniques from the tutorials for my designs and I can now develop them in my next project. For example my stencil style front cover and also my front booklet cover which I like.
Overall, I find this task of packaging enjoyable as I learnt new experiences and skills  .

For my next project, I would like to use some of my skills and techniques I learnt from this project and  use them to my advantage and also develop them a stage further. For this new project, I would like to involve some stencil work 

security

with many long research and experiments, the security for the CD case was narrowed down to magnetic tapes or Velcro.

First I attempted the magnetic tape to hold down the case. This wasn't successful at all as the magnetic tape wasn't strong enough to hold the unfolding card.



My second experiment was to try out the Velcro. This had a pleasing outcome as it held the CD securely and the security was strong. The CD was also able to hold its' place when the case was turned upside down. Three little circular stick on Velcro were attached.

Nets

 These are the nets for the CD package.

colour theme

Colour Theme: Yellow and Blue

I chose yellow and blue as the main colour theme because it looked attractive and worked well with the images that I have created. The main reason is to sell and make the CD case "spring out" to people, so why not use bright colours to illustrate this idea.
I think that it works well.

Here is inside layer net.

I think that the dotted blue with the yellow splash effect has worked well together, it makes it look attractive and also the splash effect was used in conjunction to the front cover as it looked messy.
I will use this colour theme through out the CD package so that it stays consistent.

CD design

for the CD design, I thought about making using the Bokeh effect I previous created earlier on during the project.

I wanted to use this effect and implement this into the round shape of the CD it self. Also I modified the colours a little to make it match with the colour theme.

 This is the net for the CD, the outer ring is the actual size for a normal CD with a diameter of 12 cm.

Booklet

For my booklet, I chose to have it in the size of 8 x 14 cm. This size is appropriate so that it fits in perfectly within the CD case.
Previous attempt on making the booklet bigger wasn't successful hence 8 x 14 cm were the preferred size.  The booklet would consist of six pages which contains lyrics and self edited images which I would create my self.

These images are the prototype for the booklet that will go into the CD case. As you can see it is very small. I also wanted this booklet to be small despite the fact that a bigger booklet would fit in properly in the case but also that its small and handy.

<--- A comparison of size against a pen.

The booklet will be held together by staples, I decided to use this rather than the other methods I experimented earlier on because it's more secure and strong to hold the booklet.

Inside the booklet

inside the booklet there will be three song lyrics and three images that I created my self which relate to the lyrics or the artist. 

On the front cover of the booklet, I chose to put the dispersion effect of the silhouette walking away with the artist name beneath it.

On the first page, the lyrics to " Talking to the Moon" is shown. I chose this song because I enjoyed the lyrics and rhythm of the song. Title is also something odd. hence on the second page I decided to put the image of a previous image I created which included the moon like so:

On the middle two pages, I will have the lyrics to Grenade spread across two pages.

On the fifth page I  chose to have the image of someone playing the piano to represent "The Lazy song".

Finally, the back of the booklet will consist of stars and the list of songs included within the booklet along with bar code.

Development of Photos

I got inspired by the artist Adam Sund who has come up with this tutorial in youtube.
 On the left is a photo I took of me holding a guitar and wearing a suite. I did so to imitate Bruno Mars which later on I developed into the image on the right  .

I used Adobe Photoshop to cut out my body shape and then I imported the image into Adobe Illustrator to make the silhouette.


I then took it back to Photoshop to play around with the image. I found out how to make a dispersion effect on you tube  I then adapted this into my own image which gave me this final outcome. I like this effect because it's messy. It makes the image look a bit old and warn out which gives off certain characteristics.

Again I wanted to make a silhouette using this image I took my self. I wanted to use the me holding the guitar to imitate Bruno Mars and have the background with stars and the moon. I thought of this idea because I wanted it to relate to one of his songs I want in this album, "Talking to the Moon". 

Process:
I took my self out of the original image.
I turned it into a silhouette, adjusting the levels for the threshold and make the guitar look a bit worn out.
I took an image of the starts and put it behind the silhouette as a layer and the moon as another layer in front of the star layer. This was quiet simple and easy to make. In the end I found the outcome was very well done. People enjoyed this new image I created. Therefore I wish to use this as the poster.