The 004 - Album Covers

I was approached by someone on a forum I used to use (http://www.denden.co.uk/) and he told me he had a band and wanted me to help him with some art work for their CD covers.

They've made various CD's of song that they've coverd. (Nothing released by a record label, its more just for fun on their behalf) So I decided to take up the challenge and help them.

They approached me various times and I've created a variety of different CD covers for them. Here's their first one.

I wanted to make the album artwork look as realistic as possible, so I included the copyright and barcode.

I was given a pretty grainy picture with not much to it other than a grassy background where the paving stops. I wanted to cut this out and make the cover seem cleaner and remove any strong, harsh colours so that there was no contrast with their clothing.

The second album is more interesting. I was given a single photo of each band member, and I managed to create this quite impressive and realistic looking photograph. It looks as though they are all lying on the floor next to each other, and the background fits too as I managed to create a large version of the floor and add a lighting effect from the centre to create a more central focus.

The text at the bottom looks quite good and stands out and the colours in the text brings out the colours of their clothes.

Here's the Greastest Hits cover I designed for them. They sent me two photos, very similar and the winter clothes made it seem very fresh and crisp, so I reflected this with a light diffuse glow, removed the grain but kept the white in. This washes out any softer colours but keeps others looking bright and raw. The back cover is very simple as I didn't want to take over the album cover with too much detail as the font is quite grand and may start looking too busy. I used this font as a Greatest Hits is the best tracks from an artist and suppose to be the best, therefore I used this font to reflect that.

Sex and the City

My partner, his flatmate and myself decided to have a relaxing night in and watch the Sex and the City film the other night. We're all quite different people so I thought it would be interesting to blog their different reactions.

The film's basically about 4 different women living mainly in New York.

My partner is quite a cynical person and his view on the plot was quite interesting. His favourite character, Samantha, is quite promiscuous, portrayed as someone who indulges in a lot of sexual activities and would never get married. This reflects his own beliefs almost exactly. On most of the romantic scenes or anything relating to a love emotion, his reaction was usualy to say "bah, get me a bucket", "puke" or "don't worry love, you'll get over him eventually".

On the other hand, his flat mate (male) would tell him to jokely "shut up" or make comments such as "aww, that's so sweet". His favourite character would probably be Carrie, the one who's finally fallen in love, and is getting married, only to be left at the alter by her fiance. In a discussion afterwards, it turns out that he would love to get married and thought it was going to happen quite recently.

Myself, on the other hand was stuck between the two. Whilst I like the romance and intimacy of a relationship, I also love the promiscuity and enjoyment of the single life. Therefore, the character I related to would've been Miranda. The one who's got a full time job, trying to run around her children and making sure everyone's happy, occasionally slipping up and saying the wrong thing. She loves her husband, but when it goes wrong, she's hard to convince that she should take him back.

An interesting set of prospectives and I think Sex and the City has something for everyone, a character for all of us, no matter what level of cynism your on.