Studio Brief 1 - Top 5 development

Studio Brief 1 - Design Practise, Professional Practise - Secret 7 

Development - Top 5 designs 


I performed an informal critique with a range of students to help me to choose the most appropriate designs to develop. I showed each students my 30 individual thumbnails and asked them to pick the ones they felt had the strongest concept in relation the to song, al the students were aware of the track from the expressive drawing task so gave good insight as to which they felt represented the track the best. I took these considerations into account when choosing my five designs to develop into sophisticated concepts seen below. 

Design 1. 

Based on the feedback from students I chose this design as a simple yet creative and abstract interpretation of the track, although it is the least relevant in terms of the track itself 'Digital Witness'   I feel the bold illustration would work really well using contrasting colour to make the design really visually appealing.  I stated by creating the outline of St Vincent's face using a tablet and the pen tool in illustration this allowed me to create clean crisp lines with subtle curves. I think the reason this worked so well was because the aesthetic of the design is purposely sketched and quick the pen tool works well to create a sense of minimalism and brings a hand rendered aesthetic to this digital platform. I then used the tablet to scribble the striking outline of St. Vincent's hair, I felt this contrasted the smooth lines of her jawline really well. I didn't try to modify this component of the design by moving individual anchor points as the aesthetic was supposed to look purposely spontaneous and scribbled much like her actual hair and I felt if adjusting the anchor points would defeat the point of this style. With the illustration complete I started to experiment with colour and line weight, firstly I experimented with the weight of the lines to determine if a thicker line would make the illustration bolder however I feel this lost some of the hand rendered quality of the image (left below), I then experimented with a thicker line for the facial features to make this stand out whilst keeping the scribbled hair with the thinner weighted line. I felt this worked best as it balanced the image (central below), I received positive feedback when conducting informal feedback with students as they said with the thinner weight they found it hard to see the facial part of the illustration at a glance (right below). 

I then experimented with colour adjusting the hue and saturation to create a range of contrasting colours that I felt worked well. I thought these colours worked well however found the most appropriate combination to be a selection of colours taken from the music video for digital witness. I used a dark navy background as it is bold eye-catching and similar to that used within the video this also contrasted the white hair extremely well. white hair as I felt this made the connection to the singer more apparent if there is a realistic quality to the colour scheme and finally a minted green facial illustration as she wears similar colours throughout the video. 

Design 2. 

I chose this design as I felt it was minimal, abstract and conformed to the concept of secret 7 as it would be difficult to guess the artist and song from the design alone. I started by creating the strong jawline of St. Vincent in illustrator using a drawing tablet and the pen tool, this allowed me to create a strong singular line with gentle curves that would have been difficult to recreate using a mouse. The next stage in the design was to create the twitter logo which I expanded from a JPEG into a vector so I could resize the image accordingly, I placed the twitter logo were the eye would be positioned in a typical side profile to create the abstract interpretation of the face. This also created the connotation of the user always looking at social media depicted by the twitter logo replacing the eye. I then experimented with position and colour,  I found the image worked best when centred as this created the best composition within the sleeve dimensions. I experimented with colour by adjusting the Hue and saturation to create a range of contrasting colour combinations however I found pink and green to work best for this image. I used a softer pastel pink as this reflected the types of colours used within the music video along with the green that contrasted the pink well, making it stand out but was also a prominent colour within the music video. 

Design 3.

I chose this bold design illustrative design from the feedback from other students, they said they liked the literal interpretation stripped back to its simplest form. I decided to keep this concept in mind when developing the design into a sophisticated concept. I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible literally relating the window from the lyrics of the some however I wanted to give the piece a purposely digital aesthetic using the oversimplified illustration to make it obvious it has been produced digitally. I created the illustration from a hand drawn sketch and developed this in illustrator using four squares and the negative space in-between then to create the appearance of a window. I left unfilled gaps between each component on purpose as if I developed this design into a final resolution I would experiment with screen print the result for an added texture, I felt leaving these gaps would simulate this on a digital platform. 

I experimented with the colour palate of this image using bright bold colours to instantly attract the reader to the sleeve. However as I took inspiration from design by Keith Haring I felt a similar colour scheme would be the most appropriate as I loved the bold aesthetic of his work. I chose a bold yellow similar to that found in the music video for the track, this is then contrasted with the pink sky, this creates a dystopian scene that gives a greater digital aesthetic that a realistic colour palate. Finally the sun and mountains are produced in a mint green similar to that St. Vincent wears in her music video and blue mountains as they create a powerful contrast against the pink sky. I feel the image is really bold and the combination of clashing colours works well to instantly attract an audiences attention. 

Design 4. 

Although this design was not one of the favourites picked by students I felt this concept had real potential and the rough thumbnail sketch did not it any justice, I envisioned what the design could look like reproduced digitally and felt this could work well as a sophisticated concept. I started by scanning in my initial sketch and vectorising this to so I could resize and manipulate the image further. I then incorporated the iPhone charing symbol into the illustration placing them at the ends of the spinal chord. This represents the lyric 'give me all of your mind' showing how we, metaphorically upload our every thought to social media. 

I then experimented with adding watercolour to the image, I chose a red for the large brain splatter as I felt this would help the audience further relate the illustration to the brain, I then contrasted this with blue and green to horizontal splashes to balance the image and make it look proportional. I edited the setting adjusting the contrast of these colours to make them stand out and become eye-catching for the audience,  I fell this image is intriguing and eye-catching so will attract an audiences attention against a busy display of record sleeves. 

I felt white background would work best for this as the image is relatively busy I felt white space would balance the image and ensure it is not too chaotic. I chose to add type into the image to reinforce the meaning behind the artwork, I wanted to incorporate the lyric 'give me all of your mind'. I felt the most appropriate use of typography would be a typeface that is abstract and does not contrast with the aesthetic of the image. I decided to create hand rendered type in a scribbled style with a visually consistent theme to the illustration. I started my writing the lyric out by hand, I then scanned this in and vectored it in Illustrator before converting this into photoshop and layering it over the image to make it seamlessly blend with the artwork. I feel this works well as it is not overpowering of too obvious from a glance, it is only when the image is analysed closer that is is legible. 

Design 5. 

Similarly to Design 4, this design was not overly popular with students I sought feedback from however I felt the concept could work well if developed creating a psychedelic aesthetic representing the results of social media on society. Unfortunately I did not manage my time efficiently enough due to Context of Practise deadlines I did not have time to develop this design digitally however as I thought the concept was strong I decided to include it within my top 5 concepts as a hand rendered development, then if there was positive feedback towards the design in the interim critique I could take significant time to develop the design appropriately. 

Having developed these 5 designs into more detailed and sophisticated concepts I will now present them to a group of students and lecturers in an interim critique where I can ask them for their feedback and opinions towards my designs. From this I will then identify the strongest concept/concepts to develop into final resolutions to the brief.