In Session Pressure Task

Mid way through our project we were set the task of creating an advert for a new creative magazine called Cre8. The brief explained we'd been working in pairs and have 2 hours 30 minutes to come up with a final design.

The guidelines were:
"Designer is to keep in mind that the promotional printed media should appeal to
creatives accross the spectrum of the industry (i.e. design students and professionals).
The design should be contemporary and clean - the brand ethos centres around
creative minimalist design so this should be reflected in both the branding and
associated promotional media."

Firstly me and my teammate discussed what each of us were best at. It was decided that it would be my role to create and draw up the design and then hand it over to my teammate so that he could digitalise it on Photoshop.

Below are some of the sketches that I came up with.

Whilst my teammate was digitalising the design we both liked best I made my own.

I have tried to best represent what the magazine is about by using different elements to create the logo.

Our Final Design

Throughout the two and half hours we paid important attention to the brief to make sure we were hitting the guidelines. We tried to concentrate on being minimal whilst putting in the necessary information.
The composition personally drew my eye directly to the logo, across to reading "new magazine" and "out now" and finishing by going clockwise around the edges. This composition draws attention to the logo hopefully embedding it in the reader's mind.

Sketches

Before creating digital designs I made some rough sketches on paper. Below are the scanned copies of my sketches with a brief explanation on each.

Design 1

This is my first design. It is a basic drawing of an isolated island during sunset.
The colours of the sunset are supposed to imply danger, tension and heat to represent the events within the book.
I have also taken some inspiration from the original cover with the blue snake. I mentioned that the colour blue seemed unusual against the other colours as it represents calm and peace. I have chosen to use it in this design to imply the message about a "calm before the storm" which again relates to events within the book.
The font will be in a hand drawn style and scratchy to represent the unsophistication and madness that happens in the book.

Design 2




This sketch has been designed to be minimalistic. I decided to do this to show the character's situation in the book - that they are out of the civilised world with no luxuries only bare necessities.
The composition of the cover leads the eye straight to the silhouette of the pig's head. In the story the pig's head plays a big role and is a metaphor for their insanity. I used this image to represent the tone of the book.

Design 3

I have repeated the minimalistic style of the previous design, however this time the cover is even barer.
I have used negative space here to create an unusual composition. This is to represent the strange behaviour and story of the book.
I would use a "no thrills" font that is basic and plain. Although this may seem an odd choice I think it would work well in catching an audience's eye because it is so unbelievably plain. The lack of things on the cover also depicts the character's stranded and isolated situation.

Design 4



In this cover I have tried to use some metaphors to explain the book and the issues it deals with.
The spanner and the gun are supposed to represent the battle of civilisation vs power that happens in the book.
The background will be scrunched paper which is supposed to represent the change in the characters; from normal civilised boys to "screwed up" and unstable killers.

Design 5




After looking at some book covers for Of Mice And Men I was inspired to create my own similar design.

I have two ideas for this cover:

1. It would either be a high contrast photograph (like the cover below)
2. Or in the soft pastel style

The high contrast looks dramatic and sinister whereas the soft pastel looks simple and has a youthful feel. Both of these styles I feel could work well to represent Lord Of The Flies.

Design 6

This sketch has taken inspiration from the covers of the Twilight book series.

I have used an iconic image from the book (in this case a pair of broken glasses) and surrounded it by black. The black could represent a number of things that relate to the book: evilness, isolation, fear and death.

Hopefully readers would see this unusually normal item and want to find out what makes it special in the book. For people who have begun the book this image could make them feel apprehensive and eager to read on about what is going to happen.

Design 7

This design is supposed to be in the style of a cave painting. The drawn figure would look basic (the idea being that it had been drawn by one of the characters within the story.) I have chosen to do this so that reader's can put themselves in the position so that the contents feel even more shocking and personal. The bright orange colours (that would be a cave wall) would attract attention on the shelf and also represent the dangerous tone of the story.

Design 8

Design 9 

Design 10

Introduction to Final Project

For the final project our goal was to re-design an existing book of our choice. I don't do a lot of reading but realised if I was going to be designing a book cover I would need to know a good amount of detail about it so I could capture it's tone, therefore I wrote out a list of the books I had read and knew about.

Usually the only books I read are autobiographies. However when I looked at the market for these I found most of them were quite unimaginative and simply had the person's face plastered on the front. Because of this I decided that designing for a fictionally piece was the way forward.

I considered Harry Potter but felt that the illustrations on the books were good enough and would have been hard to improve. In the end I decided upon William Goldings: Lord of the Flies. A book that I'd studied and knew about in detail.

Title: Lord Of The Flies

Author: William Golding

Published: 1954 (Faber and Faber)

This is the cover that I am familiar with.

I think the most interesting thing about this cover is its composition. It has an unusual line which the eye follows. I was attracted to the title first and then down and left to the snake. Although it is unusual I personally don't like it. It looks awkward and out of balance. The negative space at the bottom doesn't work for me. If I saw this book on a shelf next to others it wouldn't stand out to me. Although the colours are bright nothing jumps out. The font is quite bland and doesn't reveal much about the genre of the book. The snake is irrelevant to the book and isn't particularly eye catching either so for me serves no purpose.

Despite the negatives I like the colours that the illustrator has used. Yellow (a colour that is thought to stimulate nerves) reflects the excitement and adrenaline in the story. Orange is a high energy colour which again reflects well. The blue is an interesting choice and isn't a usual snake colour which leads me to believe the illustrator chose it deliberately to create a message. Blue usually denotes sadness or calm, both of which could relate to the story. The book has tragic moments and so is sad in places and also has a "calm before the storm" moment when everything is peaceful.

Second Task

The second task set was to analyse and then redesign an album cover of our choice. I decided to do french/american musician David Guetta's album: Nothing But The Beat.

I spoke to some classmates and they advised me not to do it as the design was very minimal and didn't provide many elements to play around with. However I saw this as a positive and relished the challenge.

The album contains dance and R&B music. It is mainly aimed at a young audience. A lot of his success is due to collaborating with big named international artists.

The font of the top title (“nothing but the beat”) looks like a stencil. This suggests danger, excitement, restriction, and seriousness.

The second font (“David Guetta”) is in a futuristic, sharp looking font.
This connotes something modern, cool and exciting.

The colours that are used also carry different meaning. Red evokes strong emotions such as love, lust, excitement and intensity. The colour black is associated with power and sexuality and finally white shows purity.

Before re-designing the album cover I did some research to gain some ideas and inspiration. Below are a number of different artists works that I’ve found and next to each is a brief description about how I carried their design into my own.

Madonna: You Can Dance 1987

This album cover has obvious similarities to David Guetta’s. The colours are all obviously similar as is the composition. By comparing this cover and my original it highlighted how the artist used the popularity of the musician to sell the product.

Engelbert Humperdinck: The Dance Album 1998

In this example I really liked the way the artist had used an unusual composition to attract the audience’s attention. It looks quite un-coordinated and random, however this works its in favour, as it would stand out against other album covers.

Mike Francis: Dance Album Volume One 1989

This cover is unusual, as it doesn’t fit the stereotype of usual dance album style. Usually they are minimal and simple whereas this one is quite busy and artistic with its collage style. I decided not to take this example further as I don’t think the style would suit the image of the musician.

#1 Dance Album 2003

This is what I would class as a stereotypical album cover. It conveys the genre of the album clearly without needing the text. The use of bright summery colours implies it’s a dance album. The sharp lines also connote energy and movement. Its font is bold and shiny which conjures up imagery of bright lights and fancy clothing.

Café Mambo Ibiza

I’m not sure if this is a poster for a bar in Ibiza or an album cover. Either way the colours used are very exciting. The sun setting in the background implies it’s the start of a long night for the partygoers in the picture. It also connotes happiness and relaxation.

Future Disco 2009

This cover is similar to the Engelbert Humperdinck in terms of composition. It is laid out in an unusual away. Its minimal content and random layout makes it very eye catching.

With this research I was able to start creating my own re-designed cover of the David Guetta album. In total I created four different covers and then made another four crops of each cover. Below you can see my designs.

For the first part of the task we had to re-create a new album cover using only elements from the original. This also meant that nothing could be re-sized or coloured in any way.

First Design

In this example I have mainly played around with the composition and layers. The eye follows from the top right, going down, diagonally right. This idea was developed from Madonna’s album, where her iconic image and name are used to sell the product.

I have also considered the layers, with the least recognisable at the bottom and the most famous in the front. For example, the name “David” would probably not be enough to identity my artist, whereas the name “Guetta” is immediately familiar.

Second Design

This idea was developed much more by the covers I’d found during my research. The Humperdink and Future Disco covers inspired the composition and the sharp lines in the background came from #1 Dance Album.

This cover has much more movement than the previous. I left that bit of space in the left hand corner to emphasise the lines and energy to make it look more exciting.

In the second part of the task we were aloud to do a lot more things, including re-colouring, adding stuff in, taking stuff out, size etc.

Part 2 – First Design

Here I have kept the original image of my artist the same size and in the same place as the original. However, I have resized font. My intention was to make it look more sleek and sharp.

I have also changed the background colour to a red-yellow gradient, which I took inspiration from the Club Mango poster. I chose these summery colours to represent happiness and a carefree attitude highlight it’s dance genre.

Part 2 – Second Design

I changed the background from red to black. This was because the colour black carries a modern image. It also the colour of the night so could connote the excitement of nights out.

I considered having my artist leaning against his name, however I was concerned this may look cheap and inauthentic – not an image I wanted to portray.

Finally I then made crops of each of my four designs.

From my feedback I received off my learning team, the general agreement was that number three was the most successful. The composition works the best in comparison to the others.

There was feedback that not showing the whole body of the artist made it look more mysterious and added to the excitement. Someone commented that this “mystery” element was luring and made them want to listen to find out more.

My learning team commented that the composition is unbalance and looks off. the text of “Guetta” needs to be moved up more to balance the cover.

This whole task has taught me how to think outside the obvious and to consider composition and colours. It has also highlighted how developing and re-designing something can lead to completely new things.

Below is my digitalised version