The Brief

This week we started our Picture, Symbol, Icon module with a record cover Brief. We were tasked to design an album cover for one of the artists on the brief. We were to research our artist and take inspiration from the designers and visual languages historically associated with the genre. Our final piece must be put together manually, using cutouts, collage, drawing and other techniques.

Janet Jackson

My chosen artist is Janet Jackson and her song ‘Pleasure Principle’. As my first bit of research I listened to the song to get to know what I was designing for, I also researched Janet’s background which really helped me understand the song and the thinking behind it. I found out that she had fired her dad as her manager just before writing and recording her ‘Control’ album.

Further Research

As further research I looked up all her album covers from the 80’s to try and get an understanding of her style and to find similarities between them that I could build upon. After this I did some further research into the artistic styles that were popular at the time, one style I found was Memphis, this style is very varied and can be extremely simple or very busy and crowded. I found the variety of this style very fascinating and unique, I was immediately drawn to the patterns and colours and wanted to try and incorporate them into my design.

Thumbnails

 I started sketching out a few thumbnails and found I was really drawn to using a silhouette in my design. I tried many different things with my thumbnails from black and white to super colourful, this gave me a good idea of what I liked and what I didn’t like. I wasn’t to keen on using a tone of colour on my design, even though this was the style I felt like it didn’t quite fit with the song or Janet’s personal style.

Concept One

After doing some thumbnails I was really drawn to this one.

I liked the patterned background with the green silhouette as I though it was simple, fitted the style but also wasn’t to in your face. I started developing this by drawing the pattern onto the background, I was then going to print off a green silhouette but decided to trace the silhouette onto some green paper and then hand draw the small details. I started by only drawing the outlines that were on Janet’s album cover, but after showing some of my class mates I realised that it was hard to tell what the silhouette was of, so I made the decision to add a face and more hair to show where the person was looking.

Concept Two

Initially I was going to stick with my first concept as I quite liked it, but after talking to Andrew about it I decided to try and add a bit more colour to my design. I was thinking of ways to use different materials to make my cover and was going to use string to draw the details. I then had a brain wave and decided to use the string to make the outline of a face and then used it as a stamp to create an RBG effect for the face on the cover. I kept the same background as the first design but added a little bit of colour to the  symbols to draw the cover together and make it flow and fit better.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think I have stuck to the brief and have delivered a piece of work that fits the era it is from and the styles associated with it.