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