Secret 7; Jack Garratt & The Jam

Jack Garratt

Intentions

Create something that feels contemporary and fresh

Bold colours to reflect electric//synth elements of song

Look at lyrics for conceptual research

Initial Sketches 

I started by looking at previous album covers as I did with the Lennon piece; for this track I wanted to include an aspect of the artist too. I did a few test sketches and studies of Garratt before picking the best one. While I wanted this piece to pop with bright colours I also wanted a hand rendered feel to an aspect of it. Because of this I chose to conduct these studies in pencil crayon as I did with the Tame Impala track; this would also help create some fusion between the sleeves, helping them to work more cohesively as a set.

I scanned in my chosen Jack Garratt piece before I drew the eyes onto it. While the lyrics themselves are quite emotional, the musical elements of this track gives it attitude and that 'dance' value. Removing the eyes of a figure gives them a kind of distance from the viewer much like the bass in this song does. After a little playing around I decide to go with some shades, the eyes on the figure felt too awkward and misplaced, but to leave it blank felt a little lazy and unfinished. 

Development

I felt at this point that the cover needed more to it. I went back and re-read through the lyrics and decided to include the female character sang about. I wanted the woman to look cold and disinterested and I thought back to my early sketches for Gertie Harry; the details of the figure were unnecessary as the viewer didn't need to empathise with her merely be aware of her presence. Because of this I chose to make her a silhouette and place her behind Garratt, facing away, to reflect the song's lyrics and disconnect.

Final & Mock up

Getting the balance of colours right in this image took a little time but ultimately worked I feel, reflecting the contemporary pop elements of this track and making it eye catching.

The Jam

Intentions

For this track I didn't want to just do something obviously punk // mod like

Wanted to draw it into a contemporary environment

Initial Sketches // Development

Luckily going to a purely art based university I was surrounded by possible inspiration. I thought it would be fun to focus on art school fashion, a lot of old 80s//90s clothing is coming back into fashion and a lot of students wear styles that are simply a diluted//reworked version of past subcultures.

I looked up some vintage fashion online as well as taking inspiration from the people around me. I ended up with a line drawing of a woman I felt worked quite nicely. Once imported to photoshop however the hair and lips made the piece feel imbalanced in a square format, so I scrapped them in favour of a purely fashion based piece.

I coloured the image similarly to my first ever CHVRCHES sleeve. They allowed me to once again have an element of texture to a piece but in a way that felt contemporary and fresh.

Final & Mock up

One of my regrets about this piece was the timescale. I didn't leave myself much time for this final track and I admit it feels very rushed to me. I didn't have enough time to try out different avenues // concepts and this lead to a weaker conceptual outcome. Though I like the image, I feel it lost a lot of the punk // mod aesthetic and attitude that made the song so popular in the first place. Had I given myself more time it would have been nice to go a little more DIY with it using collage and more analog methods.

Secret 7; John Lennon

John Lennon

Intention

Communicate peaceful and purity of track

Reference either Lennon or time era in some way

'peace' // 'hippie' vibes

Initial Sketches

I began sketching out some 70s inspired patterns and motifs given that was the decade the song was released. Found it felt very stale and obvious quite early on, tried moving onto some more landscape // nature based imagery but felt it was very distanced from the song. All felt too hectic for the purity that makes the song work so well so decided to narrow things down.

Most clear common conscious image attached to the song is one of Lennon. While researching found the photo of Lennon's glasses after his death, thought about how iconic the glasses were; how about turning them into a symbol of peace and hope that Lennon himself stood for.

Tried just the glasses motif but felt a little lost on their own so drew a simplified down version of Lennon's face with the peace glasses. This would be the focal point of the album sleeve but what about a background?

Drew out variations with 70's patterns and shapes. Looked at old Beatles covers for inspiration however felt this was over complicating the image; less is more! The song works because of it's simple purity and the artwork should reflect that.

Toyed around with adding the word 'peace' to finish off the image, sums up what both Lennon and Imagine is about but is it needed?

Development

Once I knew I wanted a pure image of Lennon on the front cover I began a process of redrawing his face to find the perfect expression//hair//glasses ect. This process of repetitive drawing also helped me find the best boarder and later in photoshop decide whether or not to include the word 'peace'.

Final & Mock Up

The text works with the image to make a statement; nothing else was needed visually as I feel it would have taken away from the image. The subtlety of hairstyle and rounded glasses gives the piece a 70's vibe without being overly floral and pattern based which would have conflicted too much with the feeling of the track.

Collab; Research & Branding

Net Research

Given that Izzie was the graphic designer in our partnership it made sense for her to tackle the branding side of our product. While she worked on that I explored a few more avenues for possible nets // shapes that our box could take on. Pinterest became helpful in this instance as it allowed me and Izzie to share possible ideas // concepts with each other quickly and narrow down what we wanted our box to be.

Manifesto

It was also very important that our box and branding had a solid manifesto that we believed in. I started to look at some creative manifestos that inspired bravery and risk taking; it would be nice if our box could contain a welcome letter explaining this ideology and make people feel motivated to take risks and pursue creative ventures!

Net Research Cont

While making our box a weird funky shape such as a diamond ect may have been too ambitious // impractical, I thought it was worth exploring the idea of having different shapes inside the box to hold various equipment. This would make the box as a whole more exciting to unpack and may help create more of a community spirit in the classroom; if everyone got together and genuinely looked forward to opening the BRAVE box and seeing what it had inside it, surely it would work better as a tool for engaging people.

Branding

At this point Izzie got back to me with ideas about the possible branding of our product. I really liked the pattern she had researched and it allowed for us both to play a part in the creation process. The overlay worked well with our screen print notion and using icons as motifs would help make the box more visually interesting. Izzie had a list of some equipment she would like me to illustrate in order to make icons that were relevant to our campaign, these could then be overlaid to make a pattern that could be placed on a lot of our branding.

List of Objects to Illustrate

Pencils

Paintbrushes & paint pallet

Print equipment

Art equipment (relevant to the package contents)

Hands

String 

Happy artist faces

Calendar symbol

Paint splashes

Imagination bubbles/speech bubbles

Scissors

Mug of coffee

Secret 7; Etta James & Max Ritcher

Etta James

Intentions

To avoid cliches; no couples or 60s black and white imagery

Still evoke sense of love and contentment

Initial Sketches

Given that I wanted to avoid the cliché of romantic// intimidate couples I found starting imagery for this piece quite difficult compared to others. The only way I could think about tackling this brief was to just listen to the song and draw what came to mind. The ideas became quite abstract and fragmented from the original lyrics and at times i found this a little worrying. I was concerened that the work would feel too seperate from the song but this ultimately worked in my favour.

I felt like doing some shape based painting, and while mark making in warming up and later on painting a figure, I found the elements to work well together on the page. There was something about the layout and relationship between each shape//subject that appealed to me. I decided to scan them in and push the components further to see if I could make a composition that worked and reflected the track in a fresh, more contemporary way.

The green lines reminded me of a kind of landscape and with this in mind I tried arranging them in a way that fit well. I liked having the slightly off white background too as it felt like like subtle nod to the olden era of the song's release. After trying out multiple compositions I devices the piece needed something else. The addition of hand rendered text I felt would help make the piece feel a little more intimate, I chose a line from the lyrics and wrote it out digitally and added it to the piece.

Final Image & Mock Up

Though I'm happy with the final image, I'm a little concerned that people will feel a disconnect between the artwork and the song. I made this piece based more on an emotional response than a researched concept; does this make it an image of less value or likeability? Would someone who hadn't seen my research for these briefs feel as though this was a weaker submission or would it stand out just as strong or stronger than the others? Something to think about!

Max Ritcher

Intentions

To convey a sense of how this track makes me feel; a sense of something whimsical and dreamlike

Something that feels intimate and HUMAN; something with FEELING

Initial Sketches

With no lyrics to work with I decided to follow the technique I employed in Etta James' track and just work with FEELING.

As I listened to the track and became more familiar with it, thoughts began emerging in my head in both a visual and written sense. I tried doing more abstract work in the way of mark making and blind drawing as I listened to the track. I focused on textures and movement, which later lead me onto flowing lines and starry night skies. The image of mountains and starry nights kept popping into my head, I think this was because the song made me think of something very natural, the music felt so well composed and emotionally authentic. It reminded me of getting away and that's how I wanted my artwork to feel.

To make all these components come together however I had to play around a lot with composition and colour. The addition of a thick boarder made the landscape feel as though it existed in a fixed place, but I added in the few white dots to make it look like parts of the landscape where coming out of the piece. This gave it a slightly dream like edge which fit with hoe I wanted the piece to feel.

Final & Mock Up

Much like the Etta James piece my issue with this cover is that people won't see the connection between the piece and the music, however I do feel more confident with this sleeve as I feel it has less predetermined visual cues. The addition of text also makes it feel more personal in my opinion, which could again work as both a positive or a negative depending on how it is received.

Initial Ideas & Research

Setting a Target Audience

Because of the openness in this brief we decide the best thing to start with would be a mind map. I was a little worried how we would start tacking a brief so big but Izzie came up with a great idea for target audience that I really feel set the tone for our whole project! 

We both felt very passionately about inspiring bravery in young creatives but Izzie came up with the notion of targeting our product at college tutors. This drew from personal experience however I felt as though it was a real world problem that was only getting progressively worse. The foundation course that I studied on and set me up massively for moving into higher eduction was cut after two years in favour of moving the arts funding to more sports//science subjects. And with more arts being cut from education it is vital that we inspire young people to keep going with creative subjects, and to ENGAGE them, teaching them skills that will prove to be BENEFICIAL and INSPIRING.

Possible ways this could take form

Interactive digital platform where lesson plans and tutorials can be delivered

Book/zine series

 Events pack

 Campaign/lesson pack

Inspiring film (alike the art documentary Made you Look)

Function & Deliverability 

With our target audience set up we had to decide on how this product was going to be delivered. We agreed that it should be something that in itself was brave, it had to something tangible and exciting, at this point I threw out the idea of a 'Graze' box for tutors, with equipment, materials and information so lessons could be taught that would engage students and teach them useful skills; and thus our box was born!

Materials

We wanted to continue with the brave theme and decided to screen print the box, we both have experience in screen printing and so is something either of us could do, it also feels a lot more special and would add to that feeling that the students were getting something well crafted and considered, not something vapid and uninteresting.

Going back to the idea of a book//zine we thought about what could be placed in the box. We came up with the following list for an example pack on a book binding box; 

Illustrated guide to the activity (appeals to creative people on a visual level)

Enough materials for the teacher to practice and demonstrate each technique to their class

Stickers- to give out as encouragement for students (be brave)

Theme cards

Stock - for the front covers of the book (include a limited amount as we cannot provide the materials for the full class)

Thread - its small so we could easily provide this as part of the pack 

Poster encouraging bravery and showing the technique - this could be put on a classroom wall so students could do the activity again without the teacher going over it

Research

We had a quick look online to see if anything like this already existed, and while we found the Tate Gallery Teachers Pack, it was extremely dry and dull; something we definitely wanted to avoid.

Looking at monthly subscription packs we started with Graze as it's one of the most well known and popular, I then suggested Lucky Dip which is more creative and visual. There are elements of all three of these products we want to employ in our own box but in a far more interesting and contemporary way!

We started thinking about net designs and had another quick look online to see what what out there. The idea of creating something that wasn't just a box would be another way to ensure our product was pushing the same boundaries of bravery as we were encouraging in students.

Name & Type

The next step was coming up with a name for our campaign we explored relevant words to the brief and the design decisions we had made so far;

art

design

brave

courage

brave'art

different

We came to decision that 'BRAVE' is a perfect solution for the name. It's short, snappy, easy to remember and directly informed by the brief/purpose of our product.

We explored some possible typefaces for the branding/logo of our campaign; it was important to choose something different that isn't overused within the creative industries. The experiments above are with the typefaces; Futura, Apercu, Cooper and Bluu. 

Then came the idea that the typeface and the format of the packaging could have some relevance to each other and the 'A' could appear as a triangle.

With this in mind Izzie brought up one of her pre made original typefaces. I felt personally that it worked fantastically for our brand, it was slick and unique and would provide our product with an edge others might not. Izzie was able to quickly change the A letter into a triangle incase we wanted to go with a net design that was more triangle rather than rectangular based. The all caps and full stop also made the name more of a statement. It was bold and confident, unafraid to be BRAVE!