A1 - CD Covers

Beck – Odelay

I have been asked to review two of my favoite album covers and describe why I like them; my first choice is the cover of Beck’s album “Odelay”. I have chosen this CD cover as one of my favourites for a couple of reasons.

Typography

The typeface looks like one of the font that come with Adobe, it has a remarkable resemblance to Rosewood Std. However the only differences that I can tell between the two are that the font font from the album cover is much sharper than rosewood, Also, the font on the cover has 2 colours red for the bulk and a yellow outline, rosewood std is only capable of having one colour.

Imagery

The main reason I chose this was for the choice of the image they used, a rare breed of dog called a Komondor. It originates from Hungary and most are trained to be in dog shows and contests, hence the dog jumping over the hurdle.

The dog can be seen in this image jumping over a hurdle, and first impression make the onlooker think that it looks like a bathroom mat.

Music

It also resembles the music itself, I’ve listened to the album and heard a lot of the artists other albums and they are all unique, so really the fact is that the album cover is also unique.

Remixed Album cover

The Odelay album was given a remix, and the album cover was given a redesign, it’s the same image but it has pencil scrawls all over it, it looks as if its been doodled on.

Word Count - 266

Jeff Wayne’s - War of the worlds

One of my other favourite album covers would have to be the artwork form Jeff Wayne’s war of the worlds. It’s been one of my favourite albums for a long time now the story is fantastic and so is the artwork.

Artwork

Michael Trim originally painted the image in 1976; it shows a Martian fighting machine firing its “Heat Ray” at the battleship “Thunderchild”.

The amount of detail that has gone into this is flawless, I’ve seen some of the other images that the artists had painted and he seems to use a similar style for each of his pieces, the colours varies between light and dark but it also uses them to give off a sinister aurora, this is what I believe makes the image eye-catching.

I like this artwork because in a way it stays true to the originally story, the designs of the machines that were described in the book by H.G. Wells.
The other artwork that was included with the CD was painted by a different artist its but they designs don’t differ from one another the detail is exactly the same.

Typography

The actual typeface that was used was a unique style that has a 70’s look and feel to it but it also has that Sci Fi like feel to it. It also goes well with the artwork.
The only thing I don’t like is the fact that the text of logo is not consistent, it seems to drift across too far onto the main part of the picture.

Word Count - 262

Evaluation of the first year

This time last year I was in 2 minds about going to study games design at Leeds Met. I’m happy to say that when Steve came into my Programming class it totally changed my mind. And I’m glad it happened.

A1 - Sketch Blog

This was the yearlong assignment, it consisted of sketching ideas down, writing notes from retrieving inspiration from a variety of places, sticking them in and annotating.

Throughout this year I have gone through nearly 3 sketchbooks, which I’m told is the average amount so I am pleased with that.

The sketchbook has been a very useful tool for me this year I don’t know that I would have done without it. I would say that I have obtained a good collection of inspirational images, I wanted to get a modest amount of both good and bad artwork, this would allow me to say why I like an idea, and if I didn’t like it, why.

A2 - That’s the Plan

The first proper assignment, this was basically the creation of a web plan. The class were given a choice of who do make it about, I chose Charlie Chaplin. It was strange adjusting to the way work was to be presented in the course, it totally different to the way we were previously taught.

I had never created a web plan before so I never knew how much information had to be clarified before actually making a website, it like 90% planning and 10% actually making it.
My favourite part of the assignment was getting to terms with using Adobe PageMaker, I was only familiar with using Microsoft Publisher, this was a big step up for me.

A3 - Back to BASIC

Another Web plan, but this one had a purpose, because it would be the plan I would use to create a website with in the A5 assignment.

Instead of choosing what we wanted to make the site up about, Steve gave us all a specific group of people that the website should be designed for, it was to be made to help “Silver Surfers” Learn about computer terms.

The class was split into 4 groups, and we were each given a category that would be included on the site, we were asked to find 10 items for the following:

*Networks
*Software
*Coding Language
*Hardware

The items that were collected in each category were to have a 40 word explanation and an image for each.

The images had to be compressed and cropped to a specific size so that they can be put on the website.

A4 - Image Rights

This was known as the Photoshop assignment that everyone liked, including me, it gave us a chance to finally be creative, but I had never used Photoshop before. So this was a big thing for me.

The first 2 tasks were essays on being a designer or an artist. The final two were Photoshop task; the first was an image restoration task. This was extremely difficult and I had to redo it twice.

The second task was creating two web banners, which were jazz themed. One had to be in a skyscraper and the other was to be a square. The development of them was rigorously timed but enjoyable at the same time.

A5 – Builder

This was the carry on of A3, it consisted of taking all of A3 and building the site, this was my first ever website and it defiantly wont be my last.

It was created with tables and cells, and a little bit of basic CSS, setting up the FTP settings was easy, and so was getting the tables and cells right, my problem was that when I began making pages out of the template, I started noticing things weren’t right so I had to keep going back and changing them and in some cases it messed up everything.

Along the way I had to re-do some of the images as they had become too blurry or distorted, this was a time wasting task but it had to be done.

The worst part of this assignment was getting the CGI script to work, I had picked one out in the previous assignment called “FormMail” and it gave me so much trouble, I literally wasted an entire week trying to get it to work with the feedback form.

I asked for help for Steve and from the other classmates and none of them could figure it out. In the end I just used the built in tone that was on my web hosting.

Another problems was validation, I built the site using XHTML 1.0 Strict, which I’m told is very difficult to validate, and it is, in the last week this was my main problem, I really did try everything to no success.

I asked Steve if it was possible to switch to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, as this is much easier to validate, luckily he said yes.

A6 - Revert to Type

This assignment went side by site with A5; it consisted to 2 tasks, A presentation and a series of Timed tasks.

The presention was based on a famous typographer, everyone’s was different and mine was based on Zuzana Licko. The actual presentation had to included server types of information, including her background, her work, and some examples of typographic structure.

I chose a couple of her fonts and compare the typographical structure between them, I described how the decenders curved on certain fonts, and so on.

I’m not a lover of presentations, so I was vary nervous, but form the first presentation that we did during the first seminar week, so I knew what was expected and how I could use my body language to my advantage.

The actual presentation went very well, the presentation finished bang on five minutes, I did show some slight signs of nerves but I passed so I was pleased.

The Timed tasks came up randomly during Mondays, they had varied times, some were one hour, and others were 30 minutes.

In total we did 4 tasks, the major task was to create a news paper article, using the layout skills we had learned, this was an essential piece, for the other we had to pick 2 out of the 3 that we wanted to be included for out final mark, I chose the Jonathan Gee, The Vodafone and the Hokai was left out.

I didn’t choose this because I felt that it didn’t include much design, and I felt that the other two tasks did.

A7 - Wailing Whales

The most recent task, nicknamed “the Mini Major” as it is our last task of the year. It began during the second reading week; I was given a CD to listen to and was asked to create mind maps and mood boards for of what I was hearing.

The mind maps were basically consisted of words for emotions, sounds and what places I could imagine. The mood boards were basically the same except instead of word there were images of what I could imagine was going on in the music.

The real tasks started when we got back, I was asked to create a Digipak CD cover, which included the outer image, the inner image and the CD Body.

The resource I used to get the image I wanted was SXC, the images had to be 300dpi so they were good quality.

A lot of manipulation was involved in this and I found the doing this was quite complex, so I looked into tutorials on the web, I found these very useful.

The CD Body was easy, it was just a CD Shape, I was only allowed to used up to 5 pantone colours and list them below it, I only used two.

The Logo was the best part of the Assignment; I did a lot of different sketches for this, at least 10 pages in my sketchbook. We were taught how to use FreeHand, which was the toll used to create vector images, it was fairly straightforward and enjoyable.

The Outer cover was difficult, there had to be a modest amount of manipulation on it, but how can you measure modesty?

I was good Photoshop practice and was the first time I had use a vector image program.

Time Planning

Time planning was my biggest downfall of the year, I found it very difficult trying to plan ahead for what tasks I would be doing. I had a few problems with it at the beginning of the year, but as the year has gone by I believe I have gotten better.

One of the hardest tasks for me were the timed tasks in A6 planning the time it should take for a task to complete is very difficult and I found it hard to stand by it.

Summery

My Favourite assignment for this year was probably A5, its unfortunate that there was only one web design assignment this year, but I enjoyed it.

It was a great new experience for me and has opened my eyes to new things.

My ideas has changed dramatically since my personally statement on my first day here. I have decided not to go and do the third year, I just want to get straight into a job at the end of it.

This is not because I don’t want to learn more, it is because I believe I will learn more actually been in the industry rather than reading about it.

Checklist for next year

• Use the summer to learn CSS and other coding languages
• Practice using the software for bother personal tasks and for the summer tasks
• Perfect the art of timekeeping

1 Week to Go

I've been rather busy this week, I've had to pretty much redo the outer CD design, because after I had resized it, I decided to alter the design, I had been told that there was something missing from the design, it didn’t look lifelike, it looked “Plastic”.

So I stuck with the initial space theme but instead of having a broken earth, I place a side view of the earth in the bottom corner, and used linear effect to give it more of a realistic feeling above that I placed a kind of cloudy nebula with a bright star that shines onto the earth.

For the back I have a star field with a moon in the top left hand corner, the text for the CD Tracks is placed on the left. I have used the small barcode and the emit logo place at the bottom.

I have also had to find a different font to use for the logo because I couldn’t find a bolder version I the font I initially used. I search high and low for a font that suited the theme, the font I used is called “Gravitate”, and I downloaded this font from DaFont.

For the past couple of days I had been making the actual CD cover, I had a basic design, a gray background with white text, the logo at the bottom, the Artist and Album Name at the top and I wanted to had the copyright text going round the edge of the CD.

I did a lot of trial and error with this, I finally found out that I had to use the text paths tool, I found this out using the built in help, which really I should have look there in the first place.

My plans for the rest of the week complete my evaluation, I have begun it today but I still have quite a bit to do, I hope to have it done by Friday so I have the full weekend to print out and check everything ready for Mondays seminar group.

Preflight Check

This week has been rather stressful, mainly because this is the last week where we could have a face to face with Steve about major tweaks to our work, so the past 2 days have been about getting as much as the CD covers done as I can.

Monday because with Steve offering to go over last week’s Lecture on “Artwork for Print”, this was mainly for the people who had missed it but it was also good to have it fresh in our memory.

This lasted for the first part of the morning, during this lecture I had an epiphany, the back of my CD cover had been bugging me all week, I knew it needed changing but I didn’t know what to do with it, the idea was to have a silhouette of the earth with a sort of Nebula above it emitting light. I made a quick sketch of it so I could develop it after the lecture.

For the rest of the morning I set a target of getting a rough version of the CD back artwork done, I was searching SXC for a good hour and had found a few images; the one I decided to use was initially an image of the earth with a sunburst next to it.

I cropped the image down to size that fitted the CD cover, after that I decided to do a nebula effect but I realised that the front cover had one too and I wanted each side to have something different, so instead I created a star effect using noise,

The rest of the afternoon consisted of research into the pre-flight plan, I searched high and low for some example, and I placed some of these examples in my sketchbook for future reference.

Today, instead of a lecture, Steve asked us if there was anything we wanted to know about the Second year tasks, he first told us the names of the units and what they consisted of doing, he also went over some of the activities that will be included in the summer assignment, most questions that were asked were aim at how some of the units would be marked.

The seminar groups were also different today, we (Gamma Group) were teamed up with Beta Group, we were asked to place our work upon the wall, I then realised that he wanted us to speak about it and give feedback to others.

Unfortunately my work had been measured wrong and there are a lot of things to be tweaked, so I’m keeping with the idea of a space theme but I’ve decided to start for scratch. I’m going to read up on more tutorials and try to do some “Spacey” effects for the CD cover.

I will be posting my new designs on here and on DasForum later on this week. I hope you will all give feedback.

Tasks for the rest of the week:

• Photoshop tutorials
• Complete CD Cover
• Edit logo Design
• Begin Evaluation

Un Earthly

This week has all been about developing the CD Cover, the past week I had been developing my ideas in my sketchbook, and I had finally come up with the design, unfortunately, I had to format my laptop on Monday night due to irreparable system files, (Not My Fault) which took my almost a day to sort out.

I began today by challenging the front cover of the CD That I had designed on Sunday, I have stayed with the Space idea, but instead of creating an earth-like planet from scratch, I decided to go on a free stock image site (SXC) and find an image of the earth, the one I chose was basically the earth with a reflection, problem was I didn’t want a reflection on the CD Cover.

I had anticipated that it would take a long time to get the image just right, but funnily enough it was just a 5 minute job with the magic wand tool. The initial idea I had in my head was to had a dead, crumbling earth with a massive chunk broke out of it, this was fairly simple to do, I used the Lasso tool to select the chunk I wanted and just dragged it way.

Next I had to create a space like background, to do this I clone the background layer and made the background black, then I selected the new layer and used the “Add Noise” tool and set it to had a nice amount. I then change the opacity levels so it would blend in nicely with the black background.

The last task I did today was to try to create a starry nebula, this is still an ongoing task but it was basically mad by adding clouds to a new layer, using the transparency tool and using the Dodge tool to make it thicker and the Burn tool to make it thinner.

I have had to develop more on my A1 sketch blog assignment, I feel that I just don’t have enough inspiration, I need roughly a third more to have the minimum that is needed but I need to obtain more, it will be useful for the second year.

I also had to complete my A6 referral work, so yesterday afternoon Steve went over the work and helped me edit some errors that I had missed, the rest I did last night and it is now handed in completely.

Unfortunately I now have to complete referral work for the A5 – Builder assignment, there is quite a bit to do, I would say about a day’s work, so my plan is to get this out of the way by Thursday and ask Steve for some feedback and then for the rest of the week I will crack on with both A7 and A1.

My tasks for the rest of the week:

• A5 Referral work
• A7 CD designs
• A1 Inspiration

Covering it

First of all I would like to say that I did not upload my images last week because the text kept disappearing off the page when the document was converted to an image, just thought I would let you all know.


This week has been a get on with it week, and I must say it’s been a very productive week too.


On Monday I mainly got on with my logo designs, I developed 2 sheets one was full of picture and text logos, the other was full of just image logos, these can be seen below:

I feel that these we not my best designs, I was just mainly playing about with the shapes, trying to get a unique look.


The text and Picture logos were in my opinion the best of the bunch, there were 2 certain designs that I liked, top middle and bottom middle, here are the 2 main designs that I chose yesterday:

I also received my referral feedback for the timed tasks, I need to redesign the Main task and tweak the others.


Today I started to get on with my CD Cover designs, my initial design was a scene in space, with a planet and a nebula, my sketches were horrific but when I decided to put it on the computer I looked up some tutorials and in the morning developed a space scene, I’m not happy with it but I’m going to attempt it again.

During today’s seminar groups Steve told me the reality that the logos were not suitable for this assignment, he has told me to use the original E symbol and use different fonts for the Emit text, these are my first ideas, and feedback is appreciated.


Tasks for the rest of the week:

* Complete timed task referral
* More logo designs
* At least 2 cover designs
* Preflight plan Work
* Buy new sketchbook

EmiTing Designs

Monday began as always with a lecture, this lecture was based upon using Macromedia FreeHand, the presentation went through some of the basic editing tools, it also explained how to do effects like merging shapes and also which file format to save it for when it is imported into InDesign.

For the second half of the morning a former student named Mark Feather came in to tell us about his background, life in the industry and to show us his portfolio.

He works for Empire Direct, his job is to create banners and offers and update the website when needed. He also showed us his portfolio and some of the work he had done while he was on the course.

The beginning of the afternoon started off with the other half of the FreeHand Lecture. This part of the lecture basically covered everything about colour, inserting it into shapes and text, creating Swatches, Gamut Warning and the Pantone Library.

After this, John Munday came around the class going over our goals that we set ourselves at the beginning of the course and seeing if we were still going in the right direction, he then checked some of my logo ideas and gave me some feedback.

The rest of the day mainly consisted of sketching logos, trying to choose a certain few that I would create on Illustrator for final designs.

Today began with half of the class been given a lecture and the other half, including me, carried on with my final sketches, I originally planned to create 10 logo ideas, before break I only managed to get about 6 done, so after break I decided to make a start in illustrator. I managed to get one logo completed before lunch, Steve asked me to alter a few things so after lunch I did.

In seminar groups Steve looked at my logo designs and decided that he wanted me to create another one using a font that I had put in my sketchbook, so for the rest of the day I have been creating different versions of my final logo, below is an image of what I have created so far:

Tasks for the rest of the week:

• Finalise logo designs ready for feedback
• Put Logo on forum for feedback
• Sketchbook work
• Collect more photos
• Practice Illustrator