Secret 7 research

Secret 7 research

I began looking at alternative creative visuals used within the music industry. I wasn't limiting to just album artwork, anything relevant to music may inspire different visual ideas for my concepts I have thought up.

Bellow is a promotion video created by Vault49 a cross collaborative design agency who make the most off animation, design, illustration and photography within there creative responses for clients. In this case Ministry of sound. 

What I like about this is the grittiness and the business off the animation through the use of geometric shapes and the use of primary colors, the colors remind me off De Stijl movement I touched on in a past project. I like how the composition starts in the centre and the imagery works its way outwards and this is something I want to emulate in my design, I feel due to the square frame I am provided with a centre alignment of the main visual will work the best, making the most off the outer space will be experimented with and developed with to create sufficient balance within the design. 

A production by the same agency bellow in the format of a standard CD album cover. I mentioned how I wanted to simulate a guitar string into a typographic form and this script influenced digital type gives me a brief insight on how I could play about with 3D effect imagery. Not really keen on the bright tones and the fluorescent scheme I prefer more tertiary pastel palettes. 

I may take forward the idea off illustrating a flat object like some string into something quite 3D by adding lines off lighter shades. 

Studio Husbandmens artwork for the Popular Mechanics album. I like the use of imagery cropped inside triangular shapes and how the colors within these shapes contrast with the clean white background of the sleeve,  all this works alongside the very bright and fluorescent Vinyl. Although the tonal range does contrast a lot between the sleeve and vinyl they do work well together. There are lots of different styles going on here, the morphed typography contrasting with the clean angular lines of the triangles create another interesting visual. 

What I will take forward from this is the morphed glyphs and the abstract positioning of them. Could work well within my record artwork due to the album name "strange creatures" this style of lettering does have quite a strange abstract feel about it relevant to the abstract connotations of the lyrics and the singles name.

After looking at iconic album artworks I decided to look further into some of the designers of these artworks. Factory record designer Peter Saville & Storm Thorgerson both have distinct different styles.  

Peter Saville

Born 9th October 1955.

English graphic designer.

Factory records. 

Peters experimental approach is what inspires me the most, I don't really have a set style at the moment so I feel experimentation will help me narrow down to a style I can specialize in and use as my "house style". 

Bellow are my favorite examples and shows how diverse album design can be to communicate the album, it doesn't have to be direct to the albums name. Like this design bellow, he was stuck on what to do for the album until a leaf got stuck in the windscreen and he decided on this as the focus point for the artwork. I like how the colours connote the season autumn. Very robust colours. 

Here are the rest of the designs I am fond off based on the abstract use of color and the geometric shapes in the bellow.  I like the abstract representation of a color wheel too it creates an interesting visual.  

 The illustrative feel with the contrasting clean serif typeface. This idea of one single color standing out on the stones will inspire my Harrington button design.

Illusive retro color scheme with psychedelic influences. 

Love the interactive elements of the contrasting colors within the album and the simplicity and how typography isn't needed the design is strong enough without it. 

To me this doesn't really look like an album artwork, it really reminds me of The Bauhaus style, the classic use of red and greyscale tones with minimalist elements and angular compositions of clean sans serif typefaces. The tag architecture on the bottom image is were I feel the inspiration for this album came from and if this is true this concept is presented very effectively. 

Storm Thorgerson 

18 February 1944 - 18 April 2013.

English Graphic designer.

Designer for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Scorpions, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Europe, Catherine Wheel, Bruce Dickinson, Dream Theater, The Cranberries, The Mars Volta, Muse and Biffy Clyro.

Bellow are a few examples of his works, I love his abstract representations and how he uses everyday items within nature to create an interesting contrast within his compositions. The final one I love his manipulation of nature to create the human form in an abstract sense. He seems to have  strange interaction with abstract elements and the human form.