Every year for the last three years, the competition secret 7" takes places, inviting designers to create unique vinyl covers for previously selected band. As as part of our assignment, we're all going to enter it. The idea is to design a 7"single cover for one of seven songs selected previously. No mention of the artist or the name of the song must be used, hence the 'secret' part of secret 7. So the songs to choose from this year are:
Age of Reason- Black Sabbath
Grounds for Divorce- Elbow
Team- Lorde
Virginia Plain- Roxy Music
Get it on- T-Rex
Strange Creatures- Jake Bugg and
Karma Koma- Massive Attack
Research
Before the sketching and initial ideas began I needed to research and collect previous examples of good (or bad) record design. So I took a walk in search of Leeds's finest examples of record shops (Jumbo and Crash) and took plenty of photographs whilst inside, I made sure that I liked each design example I gathered, but also, made sure to keep my search varied for different styles.
So what do I like and why do I like it?
Eels seem to have an affinity with very good album cover design and the other examples I have are very nice, clean, strong designs, however I chose this one because it appeals to the illustrator and comic fan in me. I love strong lines and patches of black used as shading, very comic book. As well as creating mystery/possibly story that links to the album this illustration seems to set the feel of the album too, I mean you can tell it's not going to be a thigh-slapping affair but rather a toe-tapping tragedy. The bedraggled, homeless look of the man, the colour blue streaking its way across the cover and the darkness looming behind him- the story doesn't seem hopeful. ALso the way he looks directly out of his cover and into your eyes means it really reaches out to its public in attempt to pull them in.
Simple, old fashioned looking typography, contrasting colours and big letter grab your viewing attention. Honestly though, I was very happy to find this design, it reminds me of Urban Outfitter's bags that they stock sometimes and I've always liked that particular bag design so it's nice to see something similar for an album. I think the reason I really like this cover though is because it looks like it could've been screen printed and hand produced- it gives the sleeve a more personal feel and a sense of character- it may sound silly but you can feel the little guy's personality, he's light hearted.
Uncannily this example looks like, and may well have been inspired by, the cover design for the penguin books, which I'm a fan of anyway: black, white and orange announcing it's presence. I'm also a fan for design that shows similar traits to photomontage- and that microphone looks like it's been cut out and layered onto the background, or at least, it does to me (however the way the orange leaks through it is just visually tasty, it messes with the sense of depth, making that microphone look... interesting).
I love this cover, so very much. I think it renewed my waining faith in typography not being essential for good record design, which is something I had been worried about after learning we couldn't put the name of the band or the title of the song onto our designs. So why do I like it, it's very punk isn't it? Which rocks. The hand-drawn quality, the use of stars (which seem to have leaked their way into youth culture and popular tattoo design) and that their upside down to to mess with the established norm and that fire or blood streaked off of them, it makes me think of meteorites and shooting stars. This design is simple and it relies on this to grab your attention, whereas title and band and image bustle for viewer appreciation in normal record design, this one doesn't have that problem, it feels confident of itself and a little rebellious. Like with the 'Electronic Sound Patterns' design the hand-madeness has given it a personality, a distinctly different one to Electronic Sound Patterns, but a punk rocker and a confident one.
The Pet Shop boys are another band with particularly good album cover designs and I really like this one (for similar reasons to the Billy Bragg/Penguin looking design) because of it's use of image and colour, black and white 'popped' over with bright eye grabbing green. I like the way that the text dominates over the image and in fact dominates the entire design, it produces a 'layering' effect where you feel like there are three layers to the image, white, photo, and finally green. (Or maybe that's stemmed from too much time on PhotoShop)
I really love the abstract shapes used in this design, as well as the non traditional dark colours. It's a brave desicion to not have any colour doing your attention grabbing for you and relying on the strength of the image, but this design pulls it off well. Though I do have problems with this design, other than the very clean and clear type, I can't honestly tell you why it's strong- it just is. It's visually interesting and a well balanced looking image, despite being full of shapes and detail it manages to not feel over-cluttered.
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