Book Binding

I had a go at some Traditional book binding methods. My personal favourite was saddle stitch shown on the red book I created. We did three types of traditional binding methods/ folds. They were the saddle stitch, Japanese stab binding and an accordion book. This really helped me to see what I can do to bind my publications as I have never done any type of binding before. After this task I purchased some book binding equipment so that I could carry on binding books at home.

Development Secret 7

My first development was to add the melted crayon scans inside of a shape. I choose a human heart as  the song is about young love. I like the simplistic white background as it made the shape clear and the dark pattern more noticeable. I also tried the shape of someone putting their middle finger up to show the theme of teen rebellion. I do not think this was as affective.

I then took some photographs of a girl who is an art student I manipulated her face making her eyes bigger and mouth big and upside down. I did this to enhance the features of the girl that boys like and make them different and unordinary. I also think that the big eyes look like they could be on a drug, which links to the life of youths and rebellion. I changed the saturation and added the melted crayons as a background to make a cool and unique effect what I believe looks psychedelic.

I also did some edits that I could submit for either Tame Impala or The Jam 'Art School' as the girl is an art student and making her eyes larger can show how artists make visual things and they rely on the sight.

First Crit Secret 7

I started to develop album art using the light drawing, scanography and melted crayon art to fit my initial sketches.

I started with using the glowing edges filter on photoshop over my scanography image to make it look like glowing lines is forming them. I also used the scan of the heart I drew in light drawing and made it a more red, pink colour. I wanted my designs to not include words and be more simplistic. I then drew around some of my scenography of hands with neon colours to look like to hands were joining together.

I talked through these covers at my critique and also showed the scans of the melted crayons and what ideas I had and asked what there opinions were. I got some good feedback,

• Look at the album cover for The Low End Theory for inspiration
• Use bright lines to made the hands look 3d
• Mix the melted crayons with some of your previous ideas
• Use the colours coming together as an background image
• look more into the hands and scanography ideas and further develop. 

Large publication Plan and Research

I started by creating a plan of information I wanted to include and what pages I needed so I could gather photography. I worked out a grid system for my writing as I knew I wanted every writing page to have the same layout. I wrote the title of each article I wanted to write so that I could collect information and facts. I used various websites to collect this information such as,

http://www.jongordon.com/blog/11-benefits-of-being-positive-3/

http://www.beautyandtips.com/motivation/10-benefits-of-positive-thinking/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2980770/It-s-true-Optimists-live-longer-Having-positive-attitude-lowers-risk-heart-attack.html

http://www.thechangeblog.com/gratitude/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/09/scientific-proof-that-you_n_4384433.html

http://www.muchloved.com/gateway/death-of-a-loved-one.htm

 This helped me to begin to write my information in my book.

I also did research into books that were similar to mine that I liked the design of such as Calm, I liked how pages were interactive and all design choices looked different but still worked well together.

I knew when I started to put my book together that I wanted to create a relaxing, happy reading experience. 

Secret 7 Melted Crayon Art

I identified in my research that I liked how there was lots of mixing together of colours in the music video for The Less I Know The Better and that I wanted to experiment with creating my own mixes. I  wanted to try something other than mixing paint as I wanted to be more original and try something that had a less glossy constancy. I decided to try melting crayon in different ways, as it would dry and become hard so I would be able to scan it to get a very clear image. Also it is more of a interesting feel and more moveable.

 I started by lining up crayons and melting them downwards with a hair dryer to create a dry effect. I also held them up and made them splatter. I picked black paper because I wanted a dark black background to fit with my Tame Impala theme. I then broke up the remaining crayons and put them in the oven to melt. It key some interesting swirling patterns which I tipped onto paper and left to dry and also what was left on the tin foil. I scanned them in and I plan to use them when creating my album cover.

Secret 7 Light Drawing

For my secret 7 project I have decided to do some experiments with light drawing as it would go with my theme of neon bright colours and dark backgrounds, I also thought it could be quite an original and creative way to start create lines and illustrations. I drew shapes along the theme of love drawing lines, stars and hearts. I will further develop some of these images for album cover ideas.

Secret 7 Scanography

First I decided to experiment with some scenography for ideas for the album cover. Because the main theme of the song is love I wanted to include male and female hands. I also wanted to experiment with moving the hands around while the scanner was scanning to see if I could make some cool effects that look a bit different. Rock music can be quite rebellious so i also played with that idea by using the scanner to elongate a middle finger. With these scans I want to create some images and effects.

Secret 7 Thumb Nails Sketches

I made 30 thumbnail sketches of ideas I wanted to try for my Album designs taking into consideration the research I had done on the song. I looked into the theme of love and what methods I could use rather than digital to create the covers. I also looked at existing covers and what colours and styles they used. These are the thumbnail sketches I came up with.

Secret 7 Project Research

To start my Secret 7 project I choose a song from the 2016 lists, There were many choices I could have picked but I knew I should do the song that I like to listen to the most which was Tame Impala, The less I know the better. I started by doing some research, I created a mind map and some picture boards. I found that they song has a theme of love and that is something I could portray through the album art.

I looked at Tame Impala themselves and noticed a theme of black and bright colours, they are an Australian rock band and a lot of images I found included mixes of colours, patterns and illustartions.

I then studied the music video and looked at the brightness of colours. The video included sexual content and some graphic imagery. I came up with a few initial ideas which I can explore including, Paint Drips, photography, Scanography, Illustrations and more. 

Secret 7 2015 task

We were given a task to look at last years Secret 7 Tracks I took the song Born Slippy (Nuxx) Underworld and created two album covers one which is more obvious to the song and another which is ambiguous.

For the first album cover I wanted to show something that first came to mind when I thought of slipping or being slippy I first thought of a banana spasifically Andy Warhols. But then decided on a caution sign which is used to  warn people of a slippy floor, I didn't want to add much text and keep it simple so I added a pictogram of a person slipping. I used a photoshop filter to make the sign look a bit more like the Andy Warhol banana.

For my more ambigiuos cover I looked more into the genre of the song which is Electronic, When looking at electronic music a lot of bright colours are involved. The song itself is about people who are drunk so I used the symbol of someone slipping to be a drunk person and made the colours blurred to so a trippy vision.

Small Publication development and feedback

I experimented with some theme's I could use in my leaflet which would include lots of colour. I had a small crit session and talked to people about my intentions showing my initial ideas. They liked the more geometric styles and said that I could include more colours than just RGB. I agreed and this meant I could develop my ideas. They also suggested that I could include some photography.