Presenting outcomes Pt.2

Stop Think Act:

When planning for my second final piece and evaluating on my work so far, it is apparent how big the role of print played in my previous critical studies, bringing together illustrator, photoshop, physical art and photography all under a coherent banner and purpose whilst exercising the role I played as designer through acknowledging and compromising the clients needs with my creative vision. Whilst the form of the poster was often the most common showcase of print design in my previous critical studies, it was not confined to such a form, ie the physical drawing brief. Therefore, the task of designing a vinyl cover and sleeve is a great way in drawing a common thread between not only previous critical studies ranging from typography to photography, but also running a clear parallel with my over arching theme of music. For me the role of a vinyl cover is the epitome of blending advertisement and art, ultimately serving as a piece of art that stands on it's own whilst simultaenosly drawing the viewer into a commerical benefit, a compound therefore made up of both my poster design and artistic focused briefs. As previously mentioned, it will challenge me creatively in drawing the balance between client needs and my aesthetic criteria, hopefully to achieve a final piece that runs coherent with both my theme, my critical studies and role as a graphic designer.

In relation to my critical studies:

Physical drawing: For me, my physical drawing brief will have considerable influence on this final piece, afterall my physical drawings will serve as my fist design and guide for the final look.

Caricature
Proportions
Perspective

How does this develop my theme

Throughout my work, the overarching theme of culture and thus music has prompted me to focus primarily on the shared visceral connection both music and art can have with an audience, forcing me to consider how I can effectively portray an audio experience through a visual medium. For example, my posters created throughout several briefs have all taken into consideration the experience it promotes within the design process, to attract a more curated audience reflective of my client's brand. In this sense, creating a vinyl sleeve is the perfect way to epitomise the relation between visual and audio experiences as they are used to create the seemless first impression that summarises the atmosphere created by the soundscape, through the art of graphic design.

How I will build upon this brief: What I discovered during this previous brief was the difficulty in drawing people into caricatures, discovering it just if not even more difficult than drawing someone accurately, as it forced me to understand the important features of the subject to accentuate and manipulate them into a drawing that both resembled them and exaggerated them. It took numerous drafts to get the correct head shape for my previous drawing, let alone adding the key facial features, a continual process of trial and error until I found what worked right. This process will be followed once again for my final piece, however my plan of drawing in the cartoon style will hopefully develop beyond people as I plan to use draw a car, using a similar technique of manipulating proportions to achieve my style. With such drawings, I plan to scan them in and upload them to photoshop in order to draw over them once again digitally to add a level of professionalism to the final piece. Doing this however, will make the end result of the piece dependent on how well I am able to bring to life the design in my head on paper, achieving both the style and the recognisability of the artist.

Vectors: This lessons learnt from this brief will be fundamental in digitalising my drawings, the central aspect of this piece.

Digital line work that acknowledges the importance of pressure and perspective.
Digital shading, (understanding of crosshatching and half tones)

How I will build upon this brief: Once again, there are several key techniques that I learnt within the vector brief that will directly transfer into this final piece. To begin, my approach to design was significantly altered by this brief, as I learnt less is more, restricted to finite colours and thus depth, forcing me to consider new ways to look at an image. This will no doubt be of great help for taking on an exaggerated cartoon style that is restriced to the way one can shade and add depth.

Torre Pentel

The driving inspiration behind this final piece is artist Torre Pentel, who combines music, more specifically hip hop artists, with an instantly recognisable comic book style, that achieves a vintage almost nostlagic aesthetic whilst adding an entirely new spin. The spanish artist was recently commissioned by 'metro boomin' to design a vinyl cover in his style for the new release of his album. What becomes most notable of his work is the use of colour and type, with each piece using several variations of colour to create a final image, moreover emulating the cmyk printing technique of old comic books through layering colour to create a vintage look with grain. When it come to the type, it is rare to find the use of downloaded fonts, rather Pentel creates his own headings, with full creativity to further build upon not only the continual attention to detail but also the personality his work conveys, with type often reflecting the subjects musical style. In an interview with highxtar he stated: "I listen first and let ideas flow in my sketchbook while listening to the music. From there, I look for references, read comics, to get more ideas flowing." This approach will be crucial for me to follow especially when considering the needs of the client, creating a design that reflects the musicians style with reference to their music, not forcing the design to conform with a pre-concieved idea of what it should or shouldn't look like.

Final piece 2 plan (statement of intent)

The idea behind creating an alternative album cover stems from the vinyl resurgence of the past decade, in which music artists have increasingly released bodies of work on the vinyl format. For this reason, many musicians have also begun creating alternative vinyl covers to not only encourage people to buy the vinyl, but also add purpose too it; whilst many don't have record players, they continue to buy the vinyl, shifting the role of the format to challenge the art on one's wall rather than challenge the all powerful rise of streaming services. For this reason, when creating an alternative vinyl sleeve, it must not try emulate the streaming service cover, yet also continue with its theme in order to draw clear thematic parallels.

The client

My client will be Loyle Carner, who I saw perform live in late 2022. The reason I chose him as my artist is because my firsthand photos are all up close, allowing me to have better reference to base my later caricatures off of. Moreover, singer Jorja Smith features on his work, therefore it allows me to use further first hand images taken at a Jorja Smith concert in summer 2023, adding further detail to the final design. Loyle Carner's 2022 album, "HUGO" will be the album I design the vinyl cover for, chosen due to the symbolic imagery that runs throughout the songs, giving me further inspiration to base my design off, instead of creating a random cover irrelevant to the subject matter, or purely making caricatures which would lack depth or interest, crucial for the client. The most notable motif throughout the album is his volkswagen car that the album itself is named off, thus a crucial element that is necessary to convey on the physical vinyl.

The process

Part 1 (The caricatures):

To begin, I had to select a variety of first hand reference photos I had taken at concerts to figure out how to approach drawing the caricature. Moreover, I found that videos were just as useful in grasping the features and mannerisms of Loyle Carner and Jorja Smith. I found myself drawing considerably upon the lessons I learnt in the physical drawing brief, building balance between identity/realism and the emphasised cartoon style.

Upon looking back at this portion of my final piece, it was without a doubt the hardest part to accomplish and took me several attempts to figure out properly, due overlooking the process of digitalising my work as an easy task. That being said, I believe it resembles both Pentel's style, my style, and most importantly Loyle Carner + Jorja Smith, thus proving successful stylistically. Moreover, I feel my work runs parallel to the context of Loyle Carner's musical context, as he continues to draw influence from MF DOOM and work with producer Madlib, both of which were pioneers in building the bond between rap and comic books, a subculture that has had giant influence within the industry both in the album art and the music itself.

It took me several attempts to land on a paper draft I felt was suitable as a guide for drawing digitally on photoshop. What was difficult for me however was being unable to shade the drawing and add depth without considering how I would replicate the style of the pencil digitally.

Using the pen and pad to draw digitally posed several challenges, as whilst it was possible to replicate pen pressure, the process was extremely tedious, often resulting in me going continuously back and forth to perfect a single line. Halfway through however I felt extremely dissatisfied with how the caricature looked, to begin, it didn't resemble Loyle Carner. Moreover, it seemed to realistic, failing to meet the professional cartoon standards I was seeking to reach.

Although I felt as though I was too far into the piece to restart, I knew it was necessary and thus I scrapped my drawing. The second time I made sure to be far more sensitive with my pencil lines, making it clear how wide I intended for each stroke to be. This was crucial for the digital replication as it ensured I didn't have to rely on improvisation whilst using that were not suited to "freestyle" with.

My strokes on the digital interpretation followed the same sensitivity of my pencil drawing, as I focused on the width of the line throughout, I was able to apply I sense of depth and perspective without having the tools to shade. The crosshatch method was also crucial, a key feature of Pentel's work as a method to not only add shade such as around the eyes but also add character to my piece.

I added Loyle's skin tone colour on a layer below, alongside the hair and the eyes. The most notable method of adding depth was through using the a black stippling brush that was also pressure sensitive. I also added white highlights too, once again to add depth while maintaining the 2d comic book style.

Although I felt the caricature had achieved the style I was looking for it felt as though it lacked matching the vintage comic book style completely. To do so, I added further halftone brush strokes, a notable feature of Pentel's work, that replicates vintage printing methods, landing on a dark brown to add further texture to the skin.

Loyle Carner, The Marble Factory, October 2022 (First hand images for caricature reference)

Jorja Smith, SWX, October 2023 (First hand images for caricature reference)

Jorja Smith

I followed the exact same process when creating my jorja smith caricature, beginning by selecting several first hand reference photos to begin sketching with. As i had learnt from previous mistakes, I was able to use my first draft as the final sketch. One noticeable difference that I had to consider was the composition, aware that I planned on placing her caricature as more of a sticker rather than a focal point. As a result, I was unable to include as much detail as I could with the Loyle Carner sketch, as when shrunk down, the detail would blur together into an incoherent mess. For this reason, I refrained from adding excessive crosshatching or halftone stippling.

Part 2 (The car):

I decided to take influence from the album itself for the vinyl cover, finding it crucial to use a volkswagen car as part of the main subject, due to the fact the name of the album, "HUGO" is in fact named of Loyle Carner's first car. I went through several possible configurations as to how I could implement this motif, realising that it would be necessary to model off a convertible in order to fit the comically sized head in the car.

Similar to the caricatures I began with my sketch, using reference photos of a vintage VW convertible to base my comic sketch off. Once again, I had to take careful consideration of how I would digitalise my work in later steps, being sure to get the perspective right, and refraining from adding detailed shading.

Next, using the digital pad and pen, I slowly went over my lines one at a time. Unlike the faces, I had to maintain a level of straightness to these lines as the sketch of the car relied entirely on its exaggerated perspective. This processed was about finding a good combination between completely neat, and hand drawn, therefore the smoothness tool came to be used often as it automatically straightened lines to the amount I chose.

When I came to colouring in my image, the process began to differ from the previous caricatures, mainly due to the variety of colours that made up the car. It became crucial therefore to think further about my colour choice as not only did I want the car to pop out on the page, but I also wanted to avoid any clashing of colour and most importantly stay coherent with the themes of my client. The choice for a bold red car was simple as the car colour is revealed in one the songs off the album, yet this left the rest up to interpretation, making it crucial to try out a variety of combinations.

I found the dotted pen tools I had downloaded made the greatest impact on the car, as it transformed the block colours into the vintage printer style that I found to be such a fundamental aspect of Pentel's work. I used several layerings of colour here, starting with a yellow halftone on the red, with a pressure stylus that allowed for denser dots where I wanted more shading. The purple wheels used a total of 5 colours stacked to create the desired colour and effect, with different sized dots at different angles to fully emulate the vintage design.

Part 3 (The logo):

Another key aspect of Pentel's work is his continual creation of custom typography designs for each artist. Whilst I was aware achieving the comic book style was not dependent on making my own logo, as there were thousands of downloadable fonts; I noticed the fluid artistic nature of Pentel's logos made the final design feel so more tailored to the artist, an feature of his work that I felt, when considering the client's perspective, to be necessary in achieving a memorable album cover. Moreover, I could build upon the skills gained in my previous typography brief that taught me how to not only use illustrator at a professional level but also made clear the difference between a font and a typography logo.

Pictured above is the typography sketch I decided to use for the vinyl cover: taking influence from vintage comic books that use a continual lettering style that interlocks each letter in a dovetail manner, promoting not only style but also a ease to read at from a distance with the chunky and distinct lettering. I learnt of this necessity in my typography brief, as I often found myself in the early drafts adding too much detail and character into the design that would take away from the core effectiveness of the typography.

Using the pen tool, I began to slowly trace around the scanned in sketch, exactly like my typography brief. Additionally, I found myself having to tweak and ultimately freestyle certain letters like in the previous typography brief, as throughout the process I became gradually aware that my original sketch was not mathematically precise and thus some lettering gaps were too big or small. Aside from this, the process itself was not difficult, especially now I knew how to use illustrator, despite its often tedious elements.

When placed into photoshop, I painted the design I deep red as the base colour, once again keeping in my that the main goal of the typography was for the vinyl to stand out, hence the use of red that drew stylistic parallels with the car. One other feature are the pinstripes I added, once again to build upon the comic book style and add further character to the final piece,

Whilst the red colour was vivid and made the cover pop, it was arguably too harsh and extracted from the rest of the subject. For this reason, I added yellow halftone dots over the red to mute the red, and also build further upon the vintage print effect that Pentel achieves throughout his work. This was necessary as otherwise it would stand out in an unnatural manner to the rest of the work that used the same halftone effect. I also stroked the design with a black outline, making the logo stand out, and act almost like a sticker, to further allude to vintage comic books.

Part 4 (The final details and font):

The "stickers" placed throughout the design on both the front and back were one of the final details added to truly replicate the comic book style, and add a level of detail necessary to fill remove distracting blank spaces for a professional look. The process varied for each design, with the main track list being of most importance and thus effort, in which I worked to create a font that I would upload digitally. Other styles used the digital pen and pad or square tool, while some were a second hand images such as the barcode seen below.

Once uploaded to photoshop, I added a threshold on top of the sketch to make all the letters the same colour. Next, I used the magic wand tool to select my letters and remove surrounding paper, leaving only the track list.

I used the same process on the stickers, adding a red colour on the example shown above as an additional detail. I reliant on referencing pentels work for the comic book bubble shapes, using the digital pen and pad to make numerous stylers scattered throughout both sides of the vinyl.

Other stickering details included a bar code, made simply buy magic wand tooling a second hand image, as well as the banner that can be seen on both sides of the vinyl, made simply by using the box tool and stroking it with a black outline. The sticker seen above is a combination of the classic comic authentification sticker and Loyle Carner's brand logo, a small but impactful detail that adds depth to the overall design.

In order to acheive the paper texture exhibited on both sides of the vinyl, I downloaded a texture and multiplied it to all my layers. The yellow undertone was achieved using a gradient map, adding a weathered look to the cover and making the colours above change slightly creating a more muted print effect that Pentel uses.

The halftone background was made using the same stippling brushes used when colouring the rest of the vinyl. I experimented with a variety of looks, but decided if would be best if I used a pressure brush in order to have denser dots around the edge of the piece, working as a gradient. Through this, I could direct the viewers eye towards the subject of the piece, building upon my knowledge of framing I learnt in the poster brief.

Overall evaluation

Skill development: There are numerous developing skills in the final album cover that cohere into a new work of its own, most notably the physical drawing brief that taught me the style of caricature through understanding proportions and their consequent exaggerations. Whilst I had not yet used a stylus to digitalise the drawings, through previously using illustrator I understood the process of digitalising, epitomised the typography brief. This brief was also fundamental in influencing the font design of both the track list, and the "Loyle Carner" logo that assimilated with the overall aesthetic of the album cover. One of the strongest yet most subtle developing skill in the outcome is the photoshop work that permeated early briefs like the posters, for it provided me with the knowledge of the texture, brush style, composition.

Quality of the piece: As I knew the piece was to be printed an held up as ultimately a piece of art, the quality was at the forefront of the design process. It was for this very reason I was willing to scrap my original drawing of Loyle Carner many hours into the piece as it became increasingly clear not only the style was off but also it ultimately did not look like him, something crucial when considering those purchasing an "alternative vinyl cover" would most likely be dedicated fans. It was the importance of quality that drove me into adding a caricature of Jorja Smith on the back of the cover, aware a luxury vinyl would need to be full of details to justify purchase, hence the little comic book style stickers scattered throughout the piece.

Focus on the client: The focus on the client was easy to maintain as I was not only drawing the client himself but also decorating elements of his brand such as a new logo of his name throughout the piece too. That however is not to say the focus wasn't thoughtful, afterall I had to sustain his brand imagery whilst creating a unique work at the same time. Thus the image of Loyle in a car was a development of his album hugo that was named after his old volkswagen car, therefore I decided it was necessary to keep this meaning at the centre of the vinyl cover too. The comic book style is also a further development of his brand, for his music takes direct inspiration from the work of MF Doom, a musician whose brand was centred around his supervillain alter ego, thus I decided to visually present this inspiration in the cover too. Thus I would argue the focus on the client remains a strong point of the outcome, for it has numerous meanings behind the imagery that all work together in a single image.

Developed reasoning behind the piece: Designing a vinyl was an inevitable outcome of the project I was aware of when first approaching. Ultimately however the main reason as to why I had not created one sooner was because I wanted to incorporate many elements of graphic design that a single brief would have restricted, aware that typography, physical drawing and vectors would all play a role in the piece. Aside from the skills however my project has interrogated all aspects of the graphic design music industry that contribute to the creation of a physical vinyl, such as the exploration of musician merchandise, and project advertisement. Moreover my essay added another layer of interest into this outcome as I explored the line between commercial and non-commercial art, concluding album covers draw a perfect blend between both elements, often held up as art on their own yet also serving an ulterior purpose of design to attract the listener.

Situe:

To finish, I printed the design out and used cardboard to visualise it as a real vinyl sleeve. I also created a center sticker by taking the sketch of Loyle's face and experimenting with different colours, adding a fade on top to maintain the vintage aesthetic.

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