Vinyl Sleeve
For my final outcome I plan to produce an album sleeve of a pre-existing album with my own rendition of the album artwork.
When recreating the album covers of my chosen artists, I intend to make a cover that is highly unique and different from the one I am recreating to avoid it being seen as a copy and want it to stand out as my own. However, I do intend to take certain aspects from the artists already existing covers eg whether they usually incorporate lots of text on the design or whether they are highly detailed or simplistic. I want to keep the certain aspects that make each artists album theres if they have any recurring motifs throughout their discography to stay true to who I am redesigning for.
Ideas/Experimenting:
Fontaines DC-
Albums- A Hero's death
My reasoning behind these picks are that Fontaines DC are one of my current favourite artists so I am very familiar with their discography. I know their sound and their aesthetics so know more so what direction I would want to take when designing for their output.
Fontaines are a current band that can be described as 'post-punk' and fall into the alternative and indie category of current music. Their output can be described as highly influenced by 70s and 80s punk bands such as The Fall, Joy Division and Echo and The Bunnymen due to their musical composition and lyrical writing.
Main cover Back Cover
The album 'A Heros Death' received critical acclaim upon its release, signifying a partial departure from their bubbling and anxiety-inducing post-punk sound found on their first album 'Dogrel' to the incorporation of more dream-like and psychedelic aspects having taken inspiration from The Beach Boys to name but one of many influences, during the writing of the record.
My choice behind this record over others from their discography is that it is my personal favourite of theirs and one I believe too have the most distinctive atmosphere to it. An atmosphere that resonates with my prefered style of photography, one that is very dream like, abstract and experimental.
When looking through Fontaines discography I could see that the band likes to incorporate quite a bit of text into their designs, including the name of the album/single and the band name onto the front cover of their designs. The designs also seem to be lacking in people and rather stick to the overall atmosphere of the album as a whole. The main designs also seem to replicate what the album is called for example the deer on their cover for their third album ‘Skinty Fia’ represents the meaning of the phrase ‘skinty fia’ which translated from irish means ‘the damnation of the deer’. The centre and focus of the cover of ‘A Hero’s Death’ is seen to be a statue of a soldier or ‘hero’ who is putting down their sheild, almost as if they are accepting death. Fontaines do not seem to stick to one colour scheme and like to mix the colours about with their designs, however when redesigning ‘A Hero’s Death’ I want to stick with the blue scheme as I see it as the most fitting for the atmosphere of the album
The main sleeve I have made for 'A Hero's Death' is one I believe to be very strong. I felt the cover needed to have a blue theme or tint to it as that is the colour the album provokes to me, and is also the main colour on the actual album cover. To keep the blue aura I edited the main cover of water to have that blue tint to it, by upping the contrast and manipulating the saturation. The over contrast also resulted in the shadow on the water to be solid black, which creates a much more abstract and dream like image, matching the atmosphere of the album. As the album is called 'A Hero's Death' the harsh, dark black in the corner, seeming to flow into the light blue gives off quite an eerie feel, representing the death aspect of the title.
My reasoning for pairing the front cover photo with the back cover photo are that they both seem to give off similar atmospheres. The back cover photo also has the solid black corner, flowing into the blue middle, resulting in each photo flowing into each other when put together. To have the pair match together more, I edited the the photo to match the blue of the front cover, as it was originally a darker blue rather than the more turquoise. I decided to go with this shade of blue rather than the darker and more purple blue as I think this shade matches the album more. It evokes that more dream like feel that the album has at it is a much more unnatural colour.
As the inner sleeve of the 'A Hero's Death' vinyl is one that is highly text and lyrical I want to replicate that in my own design. I intend to incorporate the majority of text (eg the tracklist) into the inner sleeve to stay true to what the band themselves would do with the design. Despite this, I do not imagine to include the full lyrics of each song off the album as I want to ensure I have room to include a photo of mine to add the most amount of my own work to the project and not leaving to much intended blank space.
Inner sleeve back
I wanted to add in an inside cover for the album as well as the original album does, to include the songs and lyrics to the album. I also wanted to include the photo I have used in some way as I believe it to be one of my strongest working images, and I associated it with the album when editing it. Out of the 2 versions I have made, I prefer the second one as I feel it works better together as I like the simplicity of the text.
Above can be seen another version of the inner cover for this album. This design is a much more practical approach to the sleeve as the design has to adapt to being double sided which I believe this version is more suited too. I knew I wanted to incorporate the photo of the lights into this album redesign somewhere, so that is why I stuck with the image again when experimenting with this sleeve again. I see this image as one of my strongest from my shoots as a whole and an image that matches the atmosphere of the album very well, as the image withholds a quite lucid state that is dark but intriguing, quite like the main feel that I get off the album. As this is in an inner sleeve, I knew I wanted to included more text, more specifically the track list as most inner sleeves have that information on and this album is no exception.
Bauhaus-
Albums- 4AD
Bauhaus are band I have gotten into more recently and are one I highly enjoy. One of the most well known purely 'Gothic' bands to be formed during the 70s and 80s when gothic culture became more prominent, Bauhaus's output reflects this alternative sub-culture with their very dark and artistic aesthetic.
4AD is a compilation EP by Bauhaus in October 1983 and released by 4AD and is comprised of 3 singles and three B-sides from those singles. 4AD is a British record label owned by Beggars Group. The label gained prominence in the 1980s for releasing albums from alt rock, post punk, and gothic rock with Bauhaus as one of their leading signings. I chose to to this album over one that is more infamous by the band as it is an EP that includes some of my personal favourite Bauhaus songs and due to it not being very well known, I feel I have more room to experiment with as the cover does not have that well known and recognisable status. The short track list also allows more room to experiment with on the inner sleeve.
When designing a Bauhaus cover, I knew that I needed to stick to their gothic aesthetic, being one of the most renowned gothic bands, so sticking to monochrome rather than bright and bold colours seemed to be a given. I also noticed when looking through their discography that they usually tend to just have their name on the front cover and not much text so took that into consideration when experimenting with designs. Due to their go this routes I knew I would need a photo that would go with that aesthetic and the ones I chose I believe to fit it. As the gothic aesthetic of the 80s was highly detailed fabrics when it came to dress, I see the photos that I have chosen of mine and edited replicate that kind of textured clothing of lace and fishnets, so the choice of photo seemed fitting to me. The photos also suited the highly monochromatic tones, allowing the shadows and highlights to really play off each other.
My design for '4AD' is one of my personal favourites I have done. The main sleeve (the top 2 images) and the interior cover (the bottom 2 images) all match together very well. All evoking that very dark and gothic feel that the band and their music does. The very deep monochrome of all the images provokes the dark feel needed for the EP. My favourite of the 4 images is the front cover (top left image). I see it as my strongest image as it is very simplistic, yet seems complex at the same time. The simplicity lets the image speak for itself as the main editing done to the image is over contrasting and adding the monochrome filter over. This mix of colour manipulation has resulted in an almost glowing centre in the middle of the photo, which gives off a similar aesthetic to Bauhaus' music videos which all feature highly contrasted black and white clips, lit up by harsh lighting, giving that glowing feel.
Joy Divivion-
Albums- Closer, Unknown Pleasures
Singles- Transmission
Reasoning behind my interest in Joy Division is my enjoyment of their music and their impact on music. Joy Division are a band highly regarded as one of the most influential punk bands when the genre was on the rise during the 70s. Not only was their music highly influential but their cover for the album 'Unkown Pleasures' is noted as one of the most iconic album covers ever created.
Unknown Pleasures front cover
Unknown Pleasures is the debut studio album by Joy Division, released in 1979. Peter Saville designed the cover of the album. The image used on the cover is based on an image of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919, from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. Saville reversed the image from black-on-white to white-on-black, against the band's stated preference for the original. He said he was "afraid it might look a little cheap. I was convinced that it was just sexier in black" since it represented a signal from space. Saville then printed it on textured card for the original version of the album.
This is an album cover replicates the atmosphere of the albums contents rather than just a randomly picked photo. The cover being almost completely black besides the subtle sound wave lines portrays a very mellow and dark atmosphere which not just this album but Joy Division in general embodied. The people behind this design knew that with this album cover less would be more so having this very simplistic design was a very good decision. The simplicity of it is what ultimately took it to the iconic status it has. It is highly recognizable to nearly anyone who knows pop culture, not just those who are Joy Division or post punk fans.
When it came to redesigning such a recognisable piece, I found it quite hard not to mimic the original cover too much. The design above is one that I thought to be quite a strong redesign and was ready to explore further until I got a critic saying how it did not seemed redesigned but rather a copy of the existing cover which is not what I want for this final outcome, I want it to be something that is original to me and clearly my work. After receiving this comment it made me realise that redesigning an album cover of this stature might not result in the best outcome as my redesign will always be overshadowed by the original.
Closer album front cover Transmission single cover
When picking from the 3 covers of Joy Division's discography I have chosen, I am leaning more towards the options of either 'Closer' or 'Transmission' due to the highly iconic status that the cover for 'Unknown Pleasures' holds as I feel it would feel to easy to replicate it without intent.
'Closer' is the second and last album released by Joy Division and while not as highly recognised, is still a quintessential album in the post punk movement of the era. The album keeps that darker and dreary gothic tone to it, still encapsulated as well in the cover, such as its predecessor.
As I had already made a design that I liked with my 'Unknown Pleasures' cover, I wanted to try it with 'Closer' as it is the less iconic cover from Joy Division's discography. I prefer the design with this title as the less amount of text I believe makes the design look better as it allows more of the blank, white space to be present. In my opinion, both of these albums I have chosen for this design evoke the same kind of dark and gothic atmosphere, resulting in the cover speaking for the both of them. This design takes aspects from both pre-existing covers, the image centred in the middle, but this resulted in too much of a similarity with it being an 'Unknown Pleasures' redesign as that is one of the most recognisable features of the cover, the emptiness around the image. The white instead of black background was an influence from the 'Closer' cover to again, differentiate from the main aspects of 'Unknown Pleasures'. The image itself that was chosen for the design is one I took that encapsulates the gothic aspect of this early movement in the gothic genre of music. It is an image that is dark and intriguing, whilst being quite abstract and experimental which is what gothic culture was like during this period.
Despite this design being quite a far from the original single cover, I believed the photo to be quite a connected fit for the single. The aesthetic from my photo matches the atmosphere I get from the song, one that is quite cold and one that is also quite electronic. I found that the font for 'Transmission' seemed fitting for the word and matched it quite well, however when pairing it to the chosen image, the font was too similar to the pattern that makes up the photo, this resulting in a less professional look in my opinion.
Radiohead
Albums- Ok Computer
Singles- Paranoid Android
Radiohead also amongst my current favourite artists, along with all of my picks, and are another highly influential band to come out of the later decade of the 90s. They are regarded as pioneers of the 90s music scene and when the grunge genre was on the rise. There most famous album however is 'Ok Computer' which is their third album. Such as Joy Division, not only the music the album holds, but the album cover itself has risen to that iconic status and is one of the most recognisable covers of all time.
OK Computer' is the third album from Radiohead and was released in 1997. The album cover was made by artist Stanley Donwood and sees a superimposed, Google Maps image of the I-84 and I-91 interchange in Hartford, Conn. The iconic cover art of the album shows a heavily distorted picture of an anonymous highway interchange. It is a generated collage of images and text created by York. Yorke commissioned Donwood to work on a visual diary alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind." The blue-and-white palette was the result of "trying to make something the colour of bleached bone".
Motifs in the artwork include motorways, aeroplanes, families with children, corporate logos and cityscapes. The photograph of a motorway on the cover was likely taken in Hartford, Connecticut where Radiohead performed in 1996. The white scribbles present on the piece are Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo, are present everywhere in the collages. The liner notes contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling and small annotations. The lyrics are also arranged and spaced in shapes that resemble hidden images. In keeping with the band's then-emerging anti-corporate stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."
This album cover is one I believe was made and designed to replicate the album rather than just a normal photo. The image itself is highly manipulated and edited to fit the atmosphere of the music from the album. The over tone of blue and white on the cover really creates that sort of cold atmosphere that I feel the music radiates, with the almost scratchy overlay replicating the distorted sounds of guitar. This album cover is really creating an atmosphere that is radiated from the music which is what I want my photos to capture in my project.
The cover for this single release of 'Paranoid Android' is one that intrigues me out of Radiohead's discography as it is a well known single by them and one of my personal favourites, however the single cover is not very well recognised. It is one that seems to be a hand drawn design done in pen and then later digitised for the design. The drawing seems to depict a boy in my eyes with the line "God loves his children yeah!" which is a repeated line throughout the song. As this is the line that was chosen to be put on the cover that is what lead sme to believe that the drawing is depicting that of a boy as I link the line, about children, to the drawing showing the children god loves. The messy and looseness of the drawing also stays true to the atmosphere of the single, one that is quite all over the place and is always seemingly changing and expanding. The blue and white colours also add the to electronic feel of the single which is present throughout all of the 'OK Computer' album that this single is apart of.
Paranoid Android single cover
With the Radiohead redesigns, I found to have a similar sort of problem as Joy Division with 'Unknown Pleasures', the problem that 'Ok Computer' is also apart of that iconic selection of album covers that are highly recognisable and too easy to recreate rather than redesign. Due to this factor choosing, a lesser known single cover seemed the way to go.
For this design I wanted to take it a different route to the original, the main difference being that I was not intending to do a drawn design and rather stick to methods I have used for previous designs, that being using my own photos. The reasoning being that I do not want any of the album redesigns I create to be a 'copy' of the original and believe that any kind of drawn design would replicate the original single cover to closely. Another reason being I want to incorporate as much of my own photos and work into this project.
