Secret 7 1.0

'Secret 7” takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. We then invite creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style for every 7”. 700 sleeves are exhibited and then sold for £50 apiece. You don’t know who created the sleeve, or even which song it’s for, until you have parted with your cash - the secret lies within.'


I need to aim to visually explore the artists and tracks in order to make my composition stand out over the 1000's of submissions from around the world. The brief is extremely broad which gives me a lot of freedom to explore my own style and be expressive/limited as I like. This brief provides the opportunity to submit my work into the real world where it can be judged by professionals.

Studio Brief 01

To gain more experience before submitting my work into the world, I used one of last years songs by The Rolling Stones - Dead Flower. Listening to the song was useful because it allowed me to hear the tone of the song, along with lyrics that I can use as inspiration for designs. 

Ambiguous Response: A design that's open to more than one interpretation; not having one obvious meaning.

Literal Response: Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration.

Began by quickly sketching out initial ideas related to the song. I began by sketching out literal responses such as a simple flower dead inside a vase which could be a successful illustration or photograph. My second concept was a high quality image of a flower/plant that has been pressed and dried out. I think this would be successful on a high contrast, white space background which is simple and connotes 'dead flower'. 

'And I won't forget to put roses on your grave' are lyrics that stand out to me when I listen to the song so I wanted to illustrate this on the cover by having a grave stone and a simple flower. This could be achieved using photography or drawing skills. Like a lot of poetry and literature, flowers often resemble women, love and comfort. In order to portray this, I came up with the concept of using an image of a woman and placing flowers over her eyes.

Wanted to collage 'petals' over the entire sleeve using a bright and colourful colour palette, inspired by Caribou's new LP - Our Love designed by Jason Evans and Matthew Cooper:

The composition is made out of the same image, displaced by cyan, magenta and yellow plates in order to turn the organic image into an abstract composition. The colour scheme is very balanced and harmonious which is what I need to consider when choosing a colour palette.

Took my initial concepts into Photoshop/Illustrator to add colour and be more accurate:

Chose the iconic model Twiggy as the face of the cover because it is a concise portrait photograph of the face and I like the graininess finish. Using Photoshop, I created a soft toned blue background because I didn't want to distract the audience from the focal point; the eyes. I chose pink flowers because it contrasts well on the black and white image, along with the background to make it stand out. I enlarged the flowers to make them more ambiguous and look as though they have been stuck on like a collage. I haven't included any type because I want the audience to be able to guess which song the imagery relates to. 

Using the petal concept, I simplified the shape of the petal to a simple teardrop shape because it is simple and balanced:

Layering the shapes made me think more about what colour scheme would work. I used a dull grey for the front so that it connotes death and sadness which is appropriate for the song title. However the red standing behind it is warm and can be argued to be the most emotionally intense colour which is relevant for a love song. The green stood at the back creates a complimentary colour scheme but it is overshadowed by the black petal. 

I wanted to create more ambiguous and abstract compositions because album art is a good opportunity for the artist/band to express themselves. I used the same image of Twiggy from her Vogue shoot and cut out certain areas such as the eyes, lips, nose and ears. This was to represent the dead flower dropping its petals. The red background is soft which contrasts with the grainy image but also compliments it. I experimented with different compositions by creating balance or contrast with the position and size of the shapes.

Using the same concept, I created a collage of coloured shapes before adding the facial features. This made the composition even more disjointed but allows the audiences eye to travel all the way around the composition due to the simple geometric shapes contrasting with the grainy image. This concepts is very simple yet provides a lot of scope for experimentation. I didn't plan a colour scheme but tried to consistently use flat, bold primary colours to keep it simple.

CRIT + FEEDBACK

I explained each of my concepts to a group of people who were all doing the same track in order to gain inspiration and advice on which concept is the most successful and what needs improving. I immediately noticed that everyone approached the brief differently which was refreshing and allowed us all to provide new and innovative feedback. The crit was really useful for generating more concepts that would work better. My group were predominantly attracted to the cut outs of Twiggy as they thought it was playful and expressive. They liked how the texture of the image contrasted with the flat blocks of colour. 

                                                                                                                                                 

Secret 7 2016

The tracks chosen for this years competition are:

Chvrches – Clearest Blue
Etta James – At Last

Jack Garratt – Worry

The Jam – Art School

John Lennon – Imagine
Max Richter – Dream 3

Tame Impala – The Less I Know The Better

I am familiar with all of these songs and artists apart from the Jack Garratt and Max Richter tracks. 

Immediately, I would like to explore concepts for The Jam, Etta James and Tame Impala because they are three different genres of music that provide a lot of scope for different visual styles and concepts.

RESEARCH

I want to research into iconic album covers and also some working professionals that design artwork specifically for album sleeves.

Leif Podhajsky

Podhajsky has created a lot of album art for Tame Impala, a band featured in this years Secret 7:

Expressive and ambiguous outcomes for all of the sleeves. Podhajsky uses a plethora of techniques to create a psychedelic tone which is appropriate for the genre of music. The amount of different colours and textures he manages to achieve is remarkable which ultimately gains the audiences attention. Podhajsky uses a lot of natural shapes and colours which are often flowing in order to create a psychedelic theme. There is limited typography, and in most cases, non at all which I think is appropriate because the audience can recognise the visuals instead of the name of the band. This is appropriate for Secret 7 because the rules state you can't use the band name or song name in the design. 

Podhajsky has created a lot of artwork for Tame Impala who is one of the bands who are part of Secret 7 this year. It could be beneficial to take note of Podhajsky's vibrant and complimentary colour schemes and textures, however I want to be individual with my compositions and not copy Podhajsky's style. The brief is for a competition, not a client, so I need to find a concept that stands out and gets noticed by the judges. I have a feeling a lot of people will go down the psychedelic theme for Tame Impala so I need to find a concept is innovative and fresh. 

Andy Warhol

Warhol created the cover art for The Velvet Underground's album:

Warhol's concept was innovative and appropriate because of the interactive feature. Pealing off the banana sticker reveals a pink banana which is appropriate for the sexual tone reflected in the music. This is a successful concept because people will pay more money for an original press and pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved with a vinyl sleeve. The brief encourages me to be as ambiguous as I like. This is an example of contemporary art playing a role in album art. 

Fuzz:

Inspired by the lead singer, Ty Segall's song 'I bought my eyes'. The ambiguous subject and vibrant colour palette creates a psychedelic composition. The textured mix of colours and hand crafted style is appropriate for the album because it is very innovative punk/rock and roll. 

Paul Rand

Inspired by Rand's posters due to the simple use of shape, colour and composition:

The composition above uses Gestalt's Principle of continuity as Rand has used hints of the form or a rooster inside geometric shapes. This limits the visual cues but leaves it for the audience to interpret. 

Images above consist of simple primary colour scheme which is friendly and easy on the eye. I like the use of geometric shapes because they are balanced and concise.

Different mediums and textures because it creates a three dimensional surface and intrigues the audiences eye. Once again I like the use of colour because the white text contrast well on the bold red and black shapes. 

Julian Opie

Opie is best known for his album art for Blur's album: 

His style of drawing uses contrasting and complimentary blocks of colour with limited mark making/shading to create flat compositions. His style is very consistent, even in his artwork today:

Opie predominantly creates compositions using the human form as the subject. However in some of his new work, he has focused on specific aspects of the body and concentrates more on line:

I was immediately inspired by these because the negative space between the lines can be filled with colour/texture. The line and colour scheme can connote a certain mood which can relate to the artist/song.