Week 5: CD Cover Assignment

So for class I made this delicious looking cd cover:


Et voilà my Artist's Statement, because apparently I am an artist now!

Artist’s Statement

I started out this project by scanning an image that I had drawn to use as a background. The background was the original inspiration for the design, and is probably the part I am most proud of. To make the image clearer, with the darks darker and the lights lighter, I adjusted the brightness. It gave it a much crisper look. I actually like the use of lined paper in the background. I think the hand drawn pattern is a really interesting effect.
I played around a lot with blurring and smudging tools, but I decided just to add a slight border around the lettering to make it more visible against the eccentric background. This way it would not detract from its environment. The typeface is on the plain side, but is very bold, so that it is easy to read. The lettering had to be clear because the background is so full of life.
I chose to add the colour red, firstly to add a strict contrast to the black and white background, and secondly, to fit with the name of my fictional band, “The Strawberries.” I even used the paintbrush tool to draw a strawberry of my own. I made the title of the album, “Jump.” in large lettering because it’s a single word, and that really makes it “jump” off the page. It actually took me a lot longer than expected to pick the typeface that I thought was appropriate, and even longer to position it on the page. I tried to use the rule of thirds to help determine where I placed the words and such, which is why nothing is directly in the middle of the page.
The Strawberries are probably an indie band, because they tend to have strange looking album covers, rather than a photo of the band members, for example. The target audience then, would probably be young adults.
This design is about contrast. There is the contrast of the white background with the black lines. There is the contrast of the bright red of the strawberry and the title on the background. There is even the contrast of the the more simplistic lettering over the detailed background. The typeface is not very sharp because the background has a lot of edges. There is even the contrast of a hand drawn design versus a computer design.
The whole idea is for this CD cover to catch someone’s eye. It does that with the big, bright word, ‘JUMP.’ Then the goal is to maintain that attention with the intricate background design. This will hopefully be long enough to garner the interest of the customer, so that they might check out the actual music concealed inside.


Was that not fantastically written?

I am also supposed to tell the blogsphere what I learned from the class discussion of my work. Truth be told however, my assignment was the last to be viewed, and there were zero minutes left in class by that point. So my CD cover didn't actually get discussed, like, at all. But I did learn from discussion of other works that the artist name should go above the album name. So that's good to know.

I wasn't sure I was going to do well on this assignment, because my photoshop skills are rather limited, but I actually fared pretty decently. I love being surprised by good marks.