The Making Of The Album Cover

As posed to having a typical album cover which would include the artist them selves with some typography, I wanted to create an album cover that has a simplistic approach, with simplistic graphics which may convey a complicated meaning. 

 I started of by getting the dimensions of a typical CD cover. This is essential, as it will be imperative to get the dimensions of the print outs accurate in order to get a high quality print. This will prevent pixels from being stretched and text being "bastardised" (when the original dimensions of the fonts and text are altered) which would distort and reduce the print outs quality. I then typed in the dimensions into Photoshop to create the correct sized canvas.

From the montage of logos I made earlier in the project, I picked the logo that I thought had the most vibrant combination of colours which was the first logo that was created.

I then placed the logo in the middle of the canvas and duplicated the layer twice. With the duplicated layers I wanted to create a distorted effect, almost like a 'dizzy' effect. I did this by lowering both of the duplicated layers opacity and setting the blending mode to multiply. This means that the pixels will essentially 'pass through' each other. I then moved each on to either side and this gave the effect that the logo was moving side to side. People may denote from this alone, that the music on this album will 'rock you head' because of the lyrical content, this is also emphasised by the logo itself which features a fist that has headphones wrapped onto it. This essentially creates a meaningful metaphor. This was the type of simplistic approach that I wanted and I believe that this alone will catch people attention if they were to be scrolling through albums on iTunes or if they happened to pass by it in a music store.

I then added the artists logo to the album cover so people actually know who the artist is. I got the font from my previous font type research I did in this project. I picked this one because the font also has a similar 'dizziness' effect that I have applied to the main album covers logo. I think this works well together. I then duplicated the layer three times and changed the colours to similar colours which are found on the fist logo. I basically did the same thing to the artists logo as I did to the fist logo. I decided that the album will just be called 'JACE' as it is his debut album I would like people to get to the artist himself more.

I then added a stroke to the original layer to add stability to the colours. I then merged the text layers together so that I could alter the hue of the all the layers to match the colours of the fist layer, as the effect had changed the colours slightly to darker colours. 

Finally I add the production company which is Emerald Visions and the parental advisory logo for parental reasons (to notify parents that the content of the music may include swear words and themes which may not be suitable for minors).

For the track list page, I wanted to carry on the theme of the fist, so I placed it on to the canvas (same sized canvas) and enlarged it so that the logo was partially visible.

I then added the track list with all the tracks which will be featured on the album and also kept the matching and dominant colours.