Design Practice: OUGD 406 - Studio Brief 1

To start this project we are to create a series of thumbnails that explore a wide range of ideas. I started by broadly covering all of my design ideas and continued by developing a selected idea that I felt was the strongest. This idea is based around the use of flowers and floral imagery that echoes the melancholic vibe that is received from Laura Marling's track. I created a few various different thumbnails all based around the same idea before realising that the most effective way for me to execute this idea was through the use of photography.

Once I had decided that I was going to go along the route of using photography, perhaps with some form of graphic illustration over the top, I decided the best way to get the imagery I wanted was to take images from my own personal collection. This is because the imagery I want, of flowers and nature etc., which successfully represents the easy going vibe of folk music, isn't available to me at this time of the year.

These are all of the photographs I gathered from my own personal collection to work from; there are obviously way too many for me to create final outcomes from so I narrowed my selection down.

From my collection, I managed to narrow my images down to these six. I think that these will work best with the effects I shall apply to them, as well as the icons that I make on Illustrator. These are my final photographs:

I then edited these photographs using photoshop actions that I downloaded from the internet; these actions simply being a series of different ways of editing the image that are already set up. This means that it just makes it a lot easier and quicker for me to edit my images and make them look how I want them to; even if this difference between the original image and the edited one isn't that significant or instantly noticeable. This is how the images look once I've edited them.

I decided that to accompany my photographs I would need some sort of graphic illustration over the top; this being something that I find aesthetically pleasing and have an interest in creating myself. To do so, I started looking again at the lyrics, and Laura Marling herself, and starting picking out things that I could transform into simple icons.

These are the icons that I created:

To create this, I used the images that I gathered as visual research relating to various aspects of Laura Marling, folk music or the lyrics from the song 'The Beast'. Some icons are more obvious in terms of how they link to my theme. Here is a list explaining how I have thought of each one and how it links:

Rope - Derived from the lyrics, 'I'm pulled by the pull on my throat, I'm pulled by the rope'.

Watch - Throughout the song, Marling keeps referring to different times.

Animal Skull - From the name 'The Beast', this made me think about this sort of animal skull idea.

Spider - Again, the name 'The Beast' conjures this sort of imagery.

Leaf - Representing the nature and life side of the song and music style.

Vinyl -With my design being for a vinyl sleeve, this seemed like an obvious thing.

Flower - Links with the leaf and tree, in that it represents nature. It also echoes my photographs.

Cigarette - Laura Marling is a smoker, this is a subtle way to add to information about her.

Diamond - More of an aesthetic decision, however could show the glamour side of her life.

Tree (x2) - The nature and life side of the song and music style.

Crown - 'The New Review' magazine called her 'The New Queen of Folk'.

Mirror - From the lyrics, 'Did you catch yourself in the mirror?'.

Skull - Links with the animal skull, to do with death and the overall tone of the song lyrics.

Microphone - As she is a singer, seemed like another easy choice.

To create each icon, I took an image of the existing thing, or in some cases such as the tree designed my own interpretation of it, and created a very simplified icon that visually represented it. I used only straight lines as this kept my icons very simple as well as giving the final design a more stylised aesthetic. The straight, harsh lines will also work very nicely in contrast to the natural and free-flowing appearance of the flowers etc. that is in the photographs. This contrast represents the difference between the commonly very natural and relaxed vibe from folk music and the deep, dark lyrics Marling uses within her song. I then used these icons, as well as some simple shapes and lines, to overlay on my images. These are some of the experiments I tried using my icons in conjunction with lines, shapes and other images:

These are the examples of my designs that I took to my crit.

My crit:

Once I came out of my crit, after having taken in the information that the group had given me, I decided to edit this image. This was the favoured photograph but they said that it possibly needed more in terms of design work on top. I initially went away and started playing with different icon arrangements on top of this photograph; this is how they look:

Despite all of the experimenting and various different arrangements I tried, I still preferred the use of the diamond. I decided, inspired by the quote 'The electric guitar sound is like a character in the song, almost as important as the lyrics', that by using lines and symbols that represent a guitar, I would therefore be successfully representing the song also. I kept the diamond in place and due to the way in which the diamond was put together, it fit in perfectly in conjunction with the lines. I did try looking at using my guitar concept with other types of imagery but felt that it worked best in conjunction with the diamond. I then played around with the stroke weights to see which looked most effective.