Tuesday 14 December 2010

The new cd cover

we had a meeting to descuss the progress that we had made on our visual elements for the digi pack so far. The over all feeling was that the CD cover that we had already designed didnt really fit in well with other examples of cd covers in the same genre:
This is an album cover from Dead Mau5' "for lack of a better name album. This album is of the same sort of electronic genre as the song we are using for our video. it incorporates a bold neon blue and black color scheme that is clear and easy for the viewer to recognise instantly. In contrast we felt that our current cd cover is too unclear and ultimately very confusing to look at which we feel impares its ability to be effective as a clear representation of our band image.
This is the "in silico" album cover by pendulum, another drum and bass/ electronica based band. It is effective in the same way as the Dead Mau5 album through its use of a clear colour scheme using basic shapes and bright colours, however what we really like about this particular album cover is the fact that it makes the veiwer 'look again' as there are elements within the cover that are not immediately obvious at first glance. we would really like to make this a key element of our CD cover which, in comparison isnt particulaly interesting to look at.
This is another example of a CD cover that makes the audience 'look again'. This time it is by Aphex Twin, what we really like about this album cover is that it uses a type writer as its basis but incorporates the name of the artist on the keys, we would really like to use this sort of 'incorporation technique' in our own cd cover.

After this discussion we decided to completely re-do our CD cover and hopefully make it alot more effective and similar to the examples of CD covers that we have looked at.
Firstly we decided that the basis of our album cover should be a circuit board. We felt that this would match the 'electronic' theme that we planned to run throughout our video.


This is the image that we used, we cropped it and zoomed in to find the element of the circuit board we wanted to use.
Next we created our loud noises logo, we used elements from non copyright signs for danger of loud noises and then used photoshop CS3 to edit it down until we got to a logo that we as a group decided was right for our band:
Over all we all agree that this is a much more successful CD cover than the last attempt, we have managed to incorporate all of the elements that we wanted to from our research including the bold colours, the incorporated idea and the clear design.

photos for Loud noises

To make our website and blogs looks more realistic and individual we took some photos of all of us in a band style. We used a photography student to come out with us around the grounds of our school to try and get some good quality and realistic looking band photos. These are the results:

Above: This picture incorporates the whole of the band, allowing the entire band to get media coverage. We altered the photo to make it black and white to give it a more sombre feel, which there by draws more attention to the faces as they have become the brightest object in the picture. This is a typical band style image focusing on the band members getting recognised.
Above: This image was manipulated and the contrast was altered along with the brightness to give the image a washed out feel. The shot was taken from a reverse angle to break away from the mould of typical band photos, just as our music is breaking away from typical conventional styles.
Above:  This is just a casual image, a filler image almost, of two members of the band (Jack Arnold and Ben Carey) sat in the street.
Above: This image is particularly effective; it shows three members of our group (Jack Arnold, Ben Carey and Sam Harradine) behind metal bars, almost caged in. This is a representation of how our band is trying to break out of the cage that society has put this genre in. Waiting for their big break to hit the mainstream crowds. 

Left: This picture is also a symbolic image. It represents our band breaking free of the cage that it has been forced into. Going against what society believes and doing what we what we want regardless of others opinions. Hence the steel bars with the open door.



Above: This image is basically our own recreation of the iconic album cover from the beetles’ Abbey Road, which can be seen next to our version. We tried to keep our version as similar as possible to keep the recognisability, but added our own modern twist on it to keep it individual and original. Enough said.
Left: we chose to use the negative and black and white effect again on this photo, just to give it an edge. However we removed the effect on both the members’ shoes to bring the picture to life. The way the characters are facing away from the camera resembles the way the band is not looking for attention and is happy doing their own thing, which is very similar to other bands in this genre of music, such as The Prodigy.


These photos help us to start generating an image and brand for our own band in the same way that the prodigy and other similar bands do with their publicity shots.