[Task 1 album cover design technique
Task 3: Investigating Interactive Media
Unit 4 1.1
Task 1
Define the purpose of an album cover
The purpose of an album cover is to give the audience a first impression of what type of music they’ll be listening to in the album.
Describe the images used to produce the cover (graphics & photos); how are they treated i.e. colours, positioning, objects and so on?
The album cover for ‘Green Day – American idiot’ there is an image of a hand holding a heart which is in the shape of a grenade, the grenade being in the shape of a hearts connotes love, love being shown in the shape of a grenade symbolises that love can be as dangerous and painful as grenades. In this album cover there are three main colours used: red, black and white.
The album cover for ‘Notorious Big – ready to die’ is very simple and minimal, although the title of the album is ready to die and the group is called big there is a baby placed in the middle of the image, which symbolises that the baby is about to die. The background of the image is white the colour white represents purity, this also show the innocence of the baby, as babies are pure.
The album cover for ‘ Evanescence fallen’ is a close up shot of a women’s face, the picture is placed in the centre of the cover, which makes it the focus point of the image, you can tell that this is a gothic album from the women’s hairstyle. In this album cover there is a main colour of blue were there are different shades of blue, even the face of the women is blue, this creates a midnight effect and creates some mystery to the image.
Describe the typography, how does the font style or treatment relate to the image.
Green Day – American idiot: the background being black and the writing being white and red makes it easier to read, it also makes the writing bold and sharp and easy to read. The text is placed on the left of the cover and goes downwards this makes sure that it fills up the cover and that there is a balance between the text and image.
Notorious Big – ready to die: the background of the album is white so the writing being black and bold makes it easy to read. The word die is written in red, which relates to the colour of your blood. Also the word ‘big’ being in a box which is black and the writing ‘big’ being in capital letters in red makes it stand out. Although the image in the centre of the cover is an image of a baby which doesn’t relate to the word ‘big’ as babies connotes something being small.
Evanescence fallen: the font of writing in this album cover is symbolic to fantasy; the writing being white makes it easy for the audience to read. The font being like that also adds some mystery to the album cover. The text is placed at the top of the album cover; this is placed there, as there is no space in the album cover.
What does the album cover connote about the artist/ band’s style of music is there a message contain in the overall graphic style of the cover?
Green Day – American idiot: The message I get from this is that the artist sees the heart as a threat and is scared to fall in love.
Notorious Big – ready to die: the message I get from this album cover is that the artist believes life is too short and death doesn’t have an age and that you can die no matter how old you are.
Evanescence fallen: the message I get from this that the artist is depressed, this is because of the facial expression the artist is giving seems very melancholy and mysterious.
unit 6.1
Van halen
This album cover is controversial as it has a baby as the main focus of the album cover is a baby holding cigarettes with a packet of them next to him, a baby is usually portrayed as being and angel with wings. This is controversial, as it would be classed as bad for an angel to smoke. Although the baby looks unhappy to be smoking. The baby has his head facing away from the cigarette in his hand.
This is signified with the use of imagery because the album cover shows that we are all human and that even angels have a bad side to them. It also shows hat innocence is lost as a kid or an adult.
The message is designed to stand out to an audience because using a child on the cover makes it more eye catching plus having the child with angel wing on the back with a cigarette just makes people want to know what the album is about that the cover is the way it is.
This album cover could be made less controversial by using an adult instead of a child on the cover. You could also remove the wings off of the back of the child so that religious people don’t take offense to it. I would also change the text as it looks similar to the one that titles the bible. If the artist wanted a child on the cover they could replace the cigarette with a bottle of milk.
The Game: Jesus Piece.
This album cover is controversial as it has a picture of Jesus wearing a bandana and a chain of himself around his neck.
In this album the imagery shows he is vain as he has a chain of himself around his neck and he is made to point at himself. The bandana is used to pull the audience who like rap music.
The message of this album is designed to pull the audience of people who like rap music and sort of like gang culture. It would also pull religious people in because it might offend them.
This album cover could be made less controversial by using someone else other than Jesus on the cover. Maybe take away all the religious meaning behind the album and change it to royal status not Godly status. The stain glass windows in the background are fine to use as the image inside them is of the beach as it leads to his home town. Using Jesus in his robes and with his hair should not’ be used in a context like this
Neil Philips:
this was a task we were given where we tried out new techniques on Photoshop and try and improve my editing skills. We started by going to the studio and shooting images, i decided to take an image with bobby as i thought it’ll be better to take an image with someone else. I then used photoshop to edit the images I took.
The very best of Curtis Mayfield
mim the first 40 seconds of the track there are people taking at the background while there’s also a guitat playing, this means there’s a lot of sound at the background which means it’s hard to hear Curtis Mayfield this can be confusing for the audience. Also the instruments are not levelled some are very loud while some are very quite some are very fast while some are slow this can also be less attractive to everyone which is why it’s an audience proble.
Curtis Mayfield Pusherman
In this track the instruments also not levelled although at the time there wasnt programmes which helped you edit however now we can use adobe audition to separate different instruments and balance out the level
Curtis Mayfield Move on uo (live)
you cant really here the singer due to the quality of sound also the instruments louder than the singer I also believe the microphone used at this concert isn’t good this can be due to ththe time period.
Basak Uzunsakal 