THE FINAL COVER.

decision after feedback.

Afer recieving some audience feedback from other media students and non-media students, taking note from mainly our target audience, we have decided to go with this cover (below)

The comments generally said that they enjoyed the simplicity of the piece and thought that the bolder texts took emphisis away from the image.

album cover- fifth idea.

This version is in our opinion completly different from the rest. We have used the original image of Marvin and then added a cut-out filter to it. We have then duplicated it four times and slightly changed it each time, we have taken inspiration from Blur's 'Best of' album.

album cover- fourth idea.

This version is a mixture of the first three drafts. We have used the image of Marvin as we believe its the best one out the ones we have, as it has the most impact. We have then used the translucent headings over the face and changed the opacity as it goes down the page. We enjoyed the joined up style had writing for the album name and have carried it over to this version.

We believe as this is a mixture of all our ideas it displays all aspects that we want and the representaion meets our criteria.

album cover- third idea.

The image is of the bass player Josh Marvin, we think it is a powerful image that represents Marvin in a youthful, fun way, the lighting also compliments him as it focuses all attention on the foreground, that being his face. The image itself fits the profile we are aiming for, the gesture he is using is a complete random one that represents youth rebelling against society, this fits with are video as we use many seemingly random shots in it with attitude. The image is powerful because the background is so dark and all emphasis in on marvin.

We put a film grain filter on the image in Photoshop, this makes it look old and adds the vintage edge we are looking to represent throughout our campaign. Because we wanted all emphasis in this piece to be on the image, we used a small font in the corner for the titles. By doing this we have also made the album to look more as a piece of art than as an advertisement for the band, we believe this will appeal to our non conformist target audience.

We chose the name "Knickerbocker Glory" as it is again, quite random and we enjoy the playful, youth like connetations. We also believe it has connetations of an 1950's ice cream parlour, this fits the ideolgy we are looking to create.

This was the process when making the cover.

This is the image with the grain filter on it, - that gives the vintage, weathered look we wanted.

We cut the original image down to the average CD cover size. This cut off quite abit of the fish eye border but you can still see that the image has the effect on it.

This is our original image of josh, taken with a fish eye lens. - the lighting is just perfect and focuses on his face just enough.

album cover- second idea.

This is our second draft of the album cover. We have changed the image as we believe it is a more powerful image as it the lighting compliment Marvin's face and all focus is on the foreground, as opposed to the old image that we now think is too busy.

We have applied a mosaic filter to the image and put a similar bold font on top, this time however we played around with the opacity of the text.

However, after some feedback we think that the mosaic filter takes emphsis from the power of the actual image.

album cover- first idea.

This version we have put a simple film grain filter on the image and then added a large, bold text over the top. We took inspiration from Head Automatica's Propoaganda album. After some discussion and feedback we've deicded that this does not fully meet our vintage criteria and doesnt illustrate our creative potential.

Album effects

Cutout. Blur.
Grained.

We played with a variety of different effects and filters on Photoshop for our album cover, we are thinking about combining a blurred background with a high grained foreground, this will create a strong focus of the main figure.

Blur/grain combination.

MOCK-up album cover

And here we have, an album cover mockup. - We believe that the overstretched needed to fill an averaged dimentioned CD case, enhances the photo and creates a more quirky style. We have kept it simple as this is the common trend we would like to keep throughout our tasks.

Album cover photo ideas

"A friend, jack sutherland."

"Horse guy."

These are two photo's that we have taken whilst at Reading Festival. They are two examples of style of photo we think that would suit our album cover. The first represents youth and rebellion as it is in the setting of a music festival and contains connotations of drugs, alcohol and sexual intercourse.

"A third - joshua marvin."

Research for Album Covers/Artwork

For the album cover of our song we intend to make a simplistic image with the band name and song title also on the front. When researching and looking at album covers I thought that the simlpler examples were more effective, also bands which feature a funny edge to their piece made their album look far more astheticaly pleasing. We are aware that consumers are as much swayed by the asthetics of an bands album as they are by the music. Our target audience of young people, interested in alternative, quirky music will be drawn to an attractive album cover that offers an arty edge to the photo. Examples of covers that we believe are succesful in producing the features I have diuscussed are:

I think these are succesful because they look cool and appeal to our target audience as they are asphetically attractive and look different to the conventional album cover. One of the main conventions of the style of music we are using is a quirky album cover, for example the cover of the album 'antidotes' by the Foals is interesting and different and appeals to their target audience of a more alternative person.

Our target audience of young people, aged between 14 and 25 who enjoy alternative music such as bands I have featured in the blog (the foals, arctic monkey, editors etc). They are less mainstream then fans of more comercial music and stereotypical indie rock bands, for theses reasons they look for more in an album cover than just an image of the band. Covers such as the ones I have shown not only act as a interesting way to promote the album, but they also serve as artwork that a true fan would enjoy and feel they needed to have, almost as a collectable piece. All these aspects of breaking the stereotypical conventions of an album cover support the bands who break the conventions of the music they play, they also act as a way for the audience to prove that they also dont follow the generic conventions of choosing music and are making a point of buying different, quirky style album work and music.