Music Client A01 A02 A03

For my next client I wanted to move to a different industry, exploring how graphic design links with the music industry and how it is essential to promoting the work of Music artists. I chose Spotify as a my client because they are linked with the work of millions of musicians who promote their work through their own unique ways visually. This means I will have a huge range of artists to look at throughout this project. Some of the most recognisable pieces of Graphic design are the artworks associated with famous albums, and the idea to sell music with artwork attached had a huge impact on the sale of vinyl albums. The artwork associated with an album can greatly impact its success, as many people will make the decision to listen based on the cover. Therefore the artwork needs to be eye-catching and attractive as well as properly representing the music. I will be linking back to my theme throughout, analysing artists' use of Type, Image Colour and Pattern in all the album art I look at.

Gif Brief

Artists and response planning:

'Seeking Approval Design'

'Seeking Approval Design' is the name of an online graphic designer and print seller. They make posters for music artists. A lot of his work has limited color in the image their posters often have desaturated Backgrounds or with one main colour, with bold and bright text, adding contrast and helping it to stand out amongst the background. Within their work there is a mix of hand drawn and computer made typography with a large range of fonts and it is also quite heavily textured, either with what look like scan lines or paper creases- this gives the photos a worn and used look.

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Aleksandr Maksimov

Aleksandr Maksimov is another designer and poster maker. Much of the work he does is making visual images to be paired with popular songs and music artist's work: In the example below is an example of a visual representation to go with the song "Pyramids" by Frank Ocean, and the text connects to the song. His work is often quite surreal and shows a strange and distorted view of the world which aims to reflect the music the posters represent. His work is similar to movie posters with a cinematic look which is supposed to intrigue the viewer to want to see more. Music can often have a clear narrative structure and are a way to describe a story or event, so it makes sense to have a film poster to advertise them. His images are quite heavily textured and worn, grain and aging gives them a vintage and nostalgic feel like the iconic movie posters of the 1950s.

Idea

For my response I will aim to make 3 posters with moving animated text which can be used as gifs to be displayed online or perhaps on electronic signs & billboards. I want to try an use similar type to the posters of "seeking approval design", but I can't use photos of the actual artists like they do, so I will also use Aleksandr Maksimov's style of focusing on a place, object or event associated with song. I will try to incoperate the cinematic style of Aleksandr Maksimov through use of colour and image.

Punisher

Punisher is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, released in 2020. A lot of the songs have a slightly quiet, eerie feel, as well as the album cover which is dark and mysterious: the dark rocks loom ominously behind the small & vulnerable person. I will try to replicate this ominous mood in my responses. I also chose this album because many of the songs centre around place or events, which is helpful when creating visual posters to pair with them. I chose to focus on 3 songs: "Kyoto"- a song which is a speaker talking to someone at a payphone, "Chinese satellite"- This song is about someone trying to look up the stars but only being able to see satellites and "I know the end"- which is about the world coming to an end.

Punisher Album cover

Editing the photo

I started by darkening my image: to do this I made a circle selection around the phone box, which I softened by 500 pixels using the selection panel. I filled this selection with black using the paint bucket tool and added a gaussian blur to the layer, which softens the shadow. After this I added a filter from the color lookup panel- I used the "night from day" preset which lowers the exposure of the image and shits the temperature more towards blue.

To make the light rays I first made a selection using the polygonal lasso tool and filled it with white. I then added a gaussian blur and changed the blending mode to soft light. After that I add layer masks to the layers with the light and added a gradient to the layer masks which means the opacity of the layer got lower as light travel further way from the box.

Adding the Typography

The work made by Seeking approval design features a lot of patterned symbols and shapes to decorate their typography. Most of these were made by making brushes out of simple shapes and increasing the spacing to make a repeating line pattern. This is how I made the checked lines and sequence of oval patterns. To make the spiked circle I created a thin oval using the section tool and repeatedly duplicated it and rotated the duplicated until I had a full circle.

I used a range of fonts for the text, aiming to pick ones that had a mix of type and handwritten, not plain block text. I arranged the text in three different ways, moving the composition of patterns for each. I did this by using the transform tool and the liquify tool to bend the text in different ways. This is one advantage of working with animated gifs is you have more space to experiment with different layouts and be able to include all of them.

I brought the 3 text arrangements over to my main document.

To make the paper texture, I scrunched up 3 pieces of paper- one tissue paper, one regular and one card, I then flattened these pieces out and scanned them in using the scanner.

In photoshop I changed the blending mode of the paper to darken which gave the image a paper pattern.

I created two versions of the phone box image: one with the phone box at maximum brightness and one completely dark. I would set the opacity of the bright image to zero, exported a jpeg, then increased the opacity by one, and exported another jpg.

I did this 100 times until I had a sequence of images with the brightness slowly increasing. I also alternated the text and the paper pattern every 16 images. Finally I put these 100 images into photoshop, and made each layer into a frame of a video, and exported the video as a GIF.

Making the satellite and the Earth

As I didn't want to use a second hand source so I had to make a satellite using Photoshop & Blender, and an image of the earth in photoshop for my second gif.

I sketched out a rough pan of how I wanted the satellite to look using the pencil tool and selection tool.

I then added details to the satellite, adding solar panels, a dish and wires and rings. I drew these using the pencil tool.

After this I started to make the satellite in blender using the sketch as a reference. This was quite a simple design consisting of mostly different sized cylinders.

In blender you can create a cylinder by using control A --> Create object --> Cylinder. You can the edit the size using the scale tool, and change the height width and depth using the XYZ axis. You can also add more cylinders on top using control E which is the extrude tool. Once I added more details I added a light source which creates realistic shadows to the image and exported the render as a Photo which I then imported into Photoshop.

I made an Earth my creating a gradient in a circle selection, then adding clouds and shading the shape using the brush tool and the gaussian blur tool. I also added an adding inner & outer glow to the shape using the blending options panel. I created a background of stars by creating new layer a filling it with noise using the filter gallery, then adjusting the curves to make a field of white dots out of the noise.

After this I brought in the satellite, then desaturated the whole image and lowering the temperature with a colour balance tool to give the blue tint I had in each of my gifs. I duplicated the background and made a version with a much higher exposure to use to make the earth glow. After that I added the grain effects to the images using the camera raw filter and turning up the grain slider. Finally I added the text and set the colour to red using the paint bucket tool.

Once I had arranged all the parts of my poster my image I exported different pieces so they be be moved into DaVinci Resolve ( an editing program similar to Adobe Premiere Pro). I added the normal background, the over exposed background, the satellite and the individual text layers. I set the opacity of the overexposed layer to zero then slowly raised it to create the effect of the earth glowing. I added key frames to the rotation of the Satellite and change the values between positive and negative numbers so it rotates back and forth. Finally I added the paper scans and changed the blending mode to softlight and lowered the opacity to 50%

For my more complex gif I added multiple effects using Adobe after effects. I started similarly to the other two posters: taking an image, darkening it and editing the colour and adding texture. In this image I cut out the man and Photoshopped him out so that he was a separate object from the background and could be moved around later. I added the light beam by drawing it in white with the brush tool and adding a Gaussian blur, then lowering the opacity. I exported one copy of the image without the spotlight and one with it with the as well as a PNG of the man by himself and the text and paper layers.

I raised the opacity of the spotlight frame in DaVinci which gave the effect of the light flickering on. To create the evaporating effect on the man I put the spotlight image and the man into Adobe after effects then added the liquify effect- using the brush tool I warped and stretched the man, creating key frames and pulling him up towards outside the frame. To add the dust effect I used the shatter effect in After Effects and lowered the size of the particles and added key frames to make them spread out more and more. I also added key frames to the position of the effect so it moved from left to right. Finally I exported the videos with the effects and added them to the timeline in DaVinci Resolve, then adding the text and paper patterns.

Finished Posters and GIFS

Video Brief

Album cover Designed by Brian Lotti

Louie by Kenneth Blume

This album was released by Kenneth Blume in August of 2022. This is a hip hop album made by a producer so has few words. It is a collection of mostly instrumental songs. They are supposed to be quiet, slow and relaxing.

My plan for this brief is to make a video advertising this album- in the video I will take videos from the university parks and have them slowly transition into an animated version of the setting in the Style of Brian Lotti, the artist who made this cover. This is supposed to show the feeling of relaxation and emersion this album creates. Because my overall client is Spotify for this sub-theme I will advertise the album as exclusive to Spotify so by making this album look as good as possible it will convince people to buy a subscription so they can listen to it.

Brian Lotti Artist Study

Brian Lotti is a Los Angeles based painter who made the album cover for Louie. They mostly work with paint instead of digital. The paintings are quite simple with little detail although their use of layering so many different colors make the image perfectly clear and creates realistic colors and lighting. The paint does not cover the canvas completely, sometimes they leave tiny white sections behind, although this helps gives texture to the surfaces making them seem more detailed than they are.

Experimenting & Early Development:

I tried experimenting with the style of Brian Lotti to see if I could effectively recreate the look in photoshop. I also used simple transitions in premiere pro, testing if this would be effective for a short video.

Original photo

Style test image practice drawing

Animated video test

Drawing the Images

I filmed all of my videos on a tripod and they were all taken at 24fps, 1/60 Shutter and ISO 200. Sometimes if the image I was filming was too bright I would use an ND filter ( a piece of dark glass) to darken the image. When I took a video I would also take a photo of the scene to draw from- I used a Tripod so that the scene in the photo and the video would line up perfectly.

To begin I first imported the photos into Photoshop- then I started to draw the basic shapes of each part of image- in the screen shots you can see how I started with the large blocks of colour before adding smaller details which layer over each other to create texture, shading and depth. I turned the smoothing of the brush down and used a brush shape with rough edges, this was to create the effect of Brian Lotti's paintings where the brush strokes are unconstricted and free.

To create the paint streak texture on my images I painted some rough shapes on a piece of A4 Paper which I then scanned.

I imported the photo into photoshop and cut out the shapes to fit into the areas I wanted to add texture to.

After this I changed the blending mode to 'screen' so that the paint texture was overlaid onto the blue sky.

A signature feature of Lotti's painting is adding a pink outline to some of the people and trees he paints. This helps them stand out amongst the vibrant and busy scenes as well as drawing attention to key features of the paintings, as the bright pink contrasts the natural palette.

Animating the video

To animate the people I first imported my videos into premiere pro then lowered the speed to around 50%. I made the image full screen and played the video, pausing and taking a screenshot every couple of frames, getting around 70 screenshots per video.

I imported these screenshots into photoshop and drew out the people using the brush tool. I kept them simple like the ones in Brian lotti's pictures, and also so that I could draw hundred of them efficiently

To add the pink outline I duplicated every layer with a person on it and put a layer cover in pink directly above each duplicate. I set the layer to a clipping mask, which means the pink layer is only visible when it overlaps with the duplicate. This left me with an all pink copy for each person, which could be nudges a few pixels to the left to create a slight pink outline.

This left me with a long stream of people going across the page. I went to the timeline panel and created a frame animation and selected 'make frames from layers'- this means every layer became a frame of a video swhich creates the animation of the people walking from one side of the screen to the other. I drew 6 people with an average of 70 frame for each amounts to drawing around 420 people for the animated parts of this video.

I exported the Animation and brought it into Premiere pro along with the photo of the painting and the original video of the person walking. I Put the animation of the person walking over the painting so it looked like they were walking through it

Then I lined up the original video to match timing of the animation, then added a fading transition to switch to the animation. This created the effect of the real world morphing into a painting

The clips I filmed were taken on a tripod and so were very still. I wanted to add some slight camera shake to the video, so that it looked like regular handheld footage of the world actually transforming. To do this I first film a hand held video- this was so I could copy the movement onto my clips. It didn't matter what I was filming because I was just going to transfer the movement, so I just filmed a set of keys on a carpet for about 20 seconds. I imported the Key video into premiere pro and created a new 'nest' by right clicking on the layer and selecting nest- this creates a new editing panel within a single clip. I added video stabilisation to the Keys clip using the effects panel. The I deleted the video in the nest and replaced it with the clip for my video- this copied the camera movement that had been fixed by the stabilisation and put it onto my video, giving the clips a slight shake.

I made the camera zoom in during the clips for the animated parts of the video using key frames and changing the scale of the video, so the image would enlarge, zooming in. Kenneth Blume did release a video to go with the whole album, which is a 30 minute video of a local park, with people sitting on benches and on the grass. The camera in the video films from a single position but zooms and pans to look at different people. The zooms I added to my video were similar to the ones in this video- slow but slightly wobbly.

To make the text I first wrote the title using similar type to the one on the cover. Then I created a new layer and in the Timeline panel selected create video and make new video group. I set the duration of my layer to one frame and copied it around 30 times. this means every layer acts like a frame in a video. I set "onion skins" on in the timeline settings panel- this mean I could see a low opacity version of the previous frame when drawing the next one to help guide me. In the first frame I would just draw a small section of the letter, and would have it get bigger on each layer. I repeated this for each letter spelling out the name Louie.

I could have only drawn the extending part for each which would mean the letter kept still and the only movement was coming from the growing section, but instead I chose to redraw the letter each time it got slightly longer- this made the animation more uneven and wobbly, which I think goes well with the uneven handwritten typography of the album cover.

I wanted to have the images slowly morph into the picture of the actual album cover so I Recreated the boarder that surrounds the image in the cover and cut out the section where the picture goes, leaving the section blank. I exported this as a PNG so when it was imported into Premiere Pro it had a see through square. I Placed all the images of the paintings into a sequence playing underneath the layer with the boarder. I set a key frame on the scale of the boarder, making it so large that the hole surrounds the video, then added another key frame where the album cover fits normally into the frame. This means the the borders become more visible as the video goes on and finally become normal sized as the slideshow reaches the actual album cover painting made by Brain Lotti.

Once I had put all my individual clips together to create the actual video I had to add the sound:

I deleted all sound from the original videos as these were too windy. I added some bird noises and soft wind and water sound effects to make the setting seem crowded and lively.

I muffled all sound once the headphones were put on to add to the idea that the album blocks out the noises of the outside world and makes you feel more at peace. I did this by splitting all the sound layers when the headphones were put on and adding an effect called "parametric equaliser". In the edit panel of this effect I lowered the curve of the sound settings which muffles a lot of the sound, recreating the noise cancelling effect of the headphones

Finally I also added some color grading to my videos, I mostly warmed the temperature of the videos and decreased the exposure on the brightest parts of the videos- this was so everything was properly exposed as before some parts were too bright or dark.

Finished Video

The Four painted Images

Evaluation

The things I believe worked well in this video are the transitions between the real world videos and the animated videos. I think this piece is effective in communicating the relaxed and recreational feel of the album I wanted it to feel like listening to the album transformed the setting and blocked out the real world for the viewer, creating a softer, lighter more harmonious environment. I like the way Lotti uses a massive range of colours which are applied side by side, making the colours seem bold and vivid. His style seems quite impressionistic because it has lots of light, and he uses short broken brush strokes not blended smoothly or shaded. I think this piece is effective in communicating the relaxed and recreational feel of the album. Something I would want to improve would be to have more people walking around to make the scenes feel a bit more lively as most of Brian Lotti's paintings have multiple people in them.

Typography Brief

Mercurial World & Ovidiu Hrin

Mercurial World is the debut studio album by American Music group Magdalena Bay, released on October 8, 2021. The sound of this album is very modern and synth based, with a slightly chaotic and experimental feel. The album art was done by Ram Han, a digital painter based in Seoul. She says she uses her art for "experimental fantasy", so her work is often quite Dreamlike and psychedelic. I've also been looking at the work of Typographer Ovidiu Hrin: They are Typographer and Graphic designer working in Romania. They use Purely Typography to Create posters and album art. On the surface his work looks like a mess of text without much order but when looking closer you can see hidden faces and patterns within the letters. I like his use of typography, he is very limited in what he uses, only having letters and limited color, yet he is able to create very detailed and complex images. I also love the way his work encourages the viewer to pay close attention to the details of his work as they try to read the text. I think Mercurial World would be a good album to use for my typography response as I think Ovidiu Hrin and Ram Han's style go well together, both having crowded and Otherworldly styles.

Mercurial world Album cover designed by Ram Han

Examples of Ovidiu Hrin's work

Development

Firstly, I took a photo of a pair of hands and imported the photo into photoshop.

I cut out the image using the selection tool and used the brush tool to add some shadows and and light to the image. This can be done by painting on some black and white then changing the blending modes

The Background was created by drawing random brush strokes on a layer, then using the liquify tool to create the swirl patten, and then I added a Gaussian blur to the layer to make it smoother.

I changed the colors by creating a gradient map layer and making the shadows a dark blue and the highlights yellow. I then drew the image using 5 colours so that I had 5 clear sections to place text into.

To make the ball I opened blender and created a sphere, then set the viewing mode to 'wireframe' and removed the axis and grid lines so I could take a clean screenshot of the ball. I imported the screenshot into photoshop and removed the Grey background and made the ball black. I wanted to make the edges thicker and cleaner so I added a Gaussian blur filter to the circle which expands the lines but makes them very blurry. To fix the blur I created a levels adjustment layer and dragged the sliders to make a steep curve which creates a sharp contrast on the layer bellow, making the image of the sphere much clearer. I then dragged the layer onto my main document and coloured it blue.

I traced each colour of the hands onto pieces of paper, each as a separate shape and with a pencil wrote text within the boarders. The text I wrote were names and lyrics from the songs on the album I was advertising. I scanned these drawings and imported the scans into photoshop where I arranged them into the right position to reform the image of the hands.

I then retraced the pencil lines in photoshop with the brush tool. Ovidiu Hrin has smaller outlines within his letters to created different shades of colour. This is a creative way of using pattern to create shading when you want to keep a small amount of colours. To recreate this I used the magic wand to make a selections of the space in a letter, then went to the selection panel --> Modify --> Contract the selection by 5 pixels --> stroke path. This creates a smaller version of the selection and then draws an outline of the selection. To make darker colours I decreased the spacing in-between lines and increased the thickness of the lines. I overlaid the text onto the hands and changed the colours to have them match.

The final step was to draw text over the background lines. I drew each letter individually using the brush tool and like for the hands, the words I wrote were lyrics or song titles. I also includes things like the release date of the album and the number of songs- the aim here is to get people to have to look closely to find information they want rather than just having it written plainly. I coloured the "only on Spotify" words in red to make it bold and stand out as my client is Spotify.

Evaluation

This could be a poster to advertise the release of this album as an advert for my main client Spotify. I've Included links to the albums release, such as song titles, lyrics, the date of release and the number of songs. I like this style as a more unique way of communicating this information as you have to search for within the chaotic text, rather than just being given the date immediately. Something I like about this piece is the text arranged in fluid lines reflects the energy and pace of the music and lyrics.

Screen Printing Brief

Screen printing is a technique where ink is pushed over a thin mesh and transferred onto a surface. You can use a stencil to block ink from reaching parts of the surface to create an image or pattern.

To do this you first design and cut your stencils, including markings on them called registration marks which allow you to align multiple stencils accurately. Next place you tape your stencil to the screen to keep it firmly in place and lay your paper under the screen. You can now cover the mesh with ink and the stencil will block some of the ink, leaving you with a clear image.

This technique is similar to Lino cutting, but instead of using lino, you use thin paper. The technique is also useful because printing can be very quick, and the image you get will look just like the stencil, while when you use lino you create a mirror image.

Marcel Dzama

Marcel Dzama is a contemporary artist who works in New York. He is the artist behind this cover for the 2023 album 'food for worms' by the band Shame. Dzama paints quite dark and surreal scenes which works well with the muted indie feel of the music.

He frequently uses repeating patterns like the dots and the stars shown here which are eye catching and the patterns also contrast each other and helps to separate the people from the background. For my response I will produce an alternative cover for this band in the same style as Marcel Dzama. I will screen print an image of an orchid so that the final image could act as a cover for the single 'orchid', which is one of the songs on the album.

Photoshoot

I went to the Oxford Botanical Gardens so I could find Orchids- I took over 50 photos of them so I had large range to chose from

I chose this image because the flower is open on one side and more closed on the other, giving full view of the centre, as well of displaying the dark orange patterns on the petels which I really like.

Creating the stencils in Photoshop

Firstly, I cut out the photo of the orchid using the selection tool and added a gradient map layer with three different colours- this create contrast and decreases the range of colours in the image. After this a drew out the main shapes of the flower using the brush tool. I split up the three colours into their own separate shape, and then made each shape completely black using the threshold tool so it could be printed out and traced onto paper for carving my stencil. I put each shape onto a new document with register lines which would make it easy to line up my stencils when printing.

Once I had cut out my stencils using a scalpel I then taped the stencil onto the underneath of the screen. I made sure to cut out the registration marks on each stencil in order to easily line up each piece of paper so I would always put it in the right position. When ink is spread over the screen the stencil only allows some of the ink to reach the paper which is what creates the image. Once the ink has dried the process can be repeated on the same piece of paper to produce multi-layered images. Instead of trying to print the stars in yellow onto black paper I decided to print the stars in blue onto white paper which could then be inverted on photoshop later. This meant I could save a lot of black ink and use the blue ink from my flowers.

I scanned in the image of the flower as well as the stars, and cut out the flower using the selection tool. Using the curves panel I inverted the stars so they were yellow with a black background. Next I used the brush tool to add the yellow dots pattern and the white water lines. Finally I used the brush tool to draw the water and write the name of the song at the bottom.

Finished Cover

In Situ Example

Evaluation

I like this technique of screen printing because it allows to easily layer many simple stencils to create more complex images. It is easy to create perfectly filled in shapes every-time, unlike some other printing methods like lino where you have to press hard on the paper to create such a clear image. Something I like about this piece is slightly bleeding edges of the petals which makes the flower seem more fluid, as if it has just emerged from the water. This links to my theme of Image colour as I had a limited range of colours available so had to use negative space to form my image. If I did this again I would like to rely less on photoshop and print more of the final image, like the dotted pattern and text which was added digitally later.

35mm Film Photography Experimentation

Jimmy Hendrix and Infrared Film

This is the cover for Jimmy Hendrix's album 'are you experienced', released in in 1967. The photo on the cover was taken on Kodak Infrared Ektachrome, a colour infrared 35mm film, which has the effect of turning anything which reflects infrared light red. The film was originally developed in WW2 to be used for camouflage detection as chloroplasts in trees reflect lots of infrared light, but a building would reflect very little. Some people used it for the artistic effects it creates.

Unfortunately the film was discontinued in 2009 and is now very difficult to get. However the same look can be recreated using a different process involving Black and White Infrared film which is still widely available.

These are some example photos taken on Kodak Infrared Film

Ilford SFX

Ilford SFX is a black and white film which has extended sensitivity to infrared light. This means if you can block all visible light you can use it to take infrared photos. I like this technique because these images have quite a ghostly and ethereal look to them.

Trichrome Photography

Trichrome Photography is a process where you take three B&W photos of the same scene- one with a red filter, a green filter, and blue filter. A colour filter only allows light of that colour to pass through. Taking photos with colour filters means you record the amount of a certain light wavelength that being reflected by the subjects in your picture. In the past you would then project the three photos at the same time onto the same surface and it would create a colour photo. Instead of projecting them, now you can use photoshop to overlay the three black and white images to create a colour photo. If something is not perfectly still it wont perfectly align, creating these striking colour changes. I like this technique because it allows you convey which parts of a scene were still or moving.

This is a green filter which is used along with a Blue and Red filter for Trichrome Photography- it only allows green light to pass through, meaning you can record color on black and white film, as the image represents how much green light an object is projecting depending on how bright it appears in the photo.

Here is a photo of an a Hoya R72 Filter, which blocks out all visible light, and only allows infrared light to pass through. Without this filter, the photos appear as if they were taken on normal black and white film.

I imported the scans of the film negatives into Adobe Lightroom and edited them using 'Negatives lab pro' this is a plug in software for Adobe Lightroom that allows you to convert film negatives into positive images

I converted each photo using Negative Lab Pro. I decided that 6 stops of over exposure works best and imported the 6th infrared photo, the green filter photo and the red filter photo all onto their own separate document in photoshop. On each document I set the mode to Grayscale and cropped them so they were all the exact same size- if they are one pixel too big or small photoshop wont be able to merge them.

In channel settings panel there is a Photo Merge option which I used to create the colour photo - I set the Infrared photo as the Red Chanel, and since the infrared photo has extremely bright plant life compared to the other two, the resulting image will have red plant life.

Digital photos of what the images would have looked like

Infrared Trichrome results

Artist Response using the Images

This links to my overall theme because I used experimental photography methods as a way to manipulate the colour of my image, resulting in these alien, sci-fi pictures. I used the warp tool to ben my typography to pair well with the surreal and unnatural look of the photos. This piece could work well as a re-release for the Hendrix album, as the change in technique reflects the passing of time since his album cover was designed.

Presenting Outcomes 1 A04

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