The Brief…
We were presented with 9 records that have been recognised for having defined and popolarised entire genres of music, the subcultures, fashion and visual languages associated with them.
The list was as follows:
So What – Miles David (modal jazz) 1956
Do the reggay – Toots and the Maytals (reggae) 1968
New Rose – The Damned (punk) 1976
Music for Airports (1/1) – Brian Eno (Ambient) 1978
Rapper’s Delight – Sugarhill Gang (hip hop) 1980
Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus (goth) 1982
Strings of Life – Rhythim is Rythim (techno) 1986
The Pleasure Principle – Janet Jackson (r&b) 1986
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana (grunge) 1991
We had to design a front cover of one of the chosen pieces.
Oblique Strategies
I chose ‘Music for Airports’ as I was also intersted in the oblique strategies cards that were a side task only for the ambient vinyl. Brian Eno (the creator of my album) and Peter Schmidt published the oblique strategies in 1975. They are a card-based method for prompting creativity, part of “Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas”.
Throughout the process I drew three cards which were:
You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas, (this was a confidence booster that encouraged me to not hold back on my ideas, and anyway, if it was a bad idea, I could blame this card!).
Don’t be afraid of clichés, (this was helpful as clichés can nevertheless be a deeply held view or something that has genuine relevance.. So in the case of making an album cover, if a cliche image brought across the intended feeling, this would want fine, as that visual display would convey what will be heard on the vinyl).
Tape your mouth, (this was a rather interesting one if I took it literally as people would be looking at me rather weirdly in the studio if they did not know the context, so I didn’t use tape but didn’t speak to others while working on the cover. Not only did I actually crack on and get work done, I couldn’t ask others for advice which had both positive and negative effects. As a positive, I had to trust my ideas. This was affirmation of the previous two cards as well. Then as a negative, I couldn’t receive any advice in the moment on how I could look at something differently or perhaps receive positive feedback on my thought process.
Visual Research Board
When I first listened to the song it instantly reminded me of the opening scene from the movie “Hector and the Search for Happiness”. The music compositions were similar, both very dreamy, visualized also in the movie as the main character is dreaming and flying a biplane through the clouds. I also thought the plane linked back to the airports in the title.
My aim for my album cover was to create a simpler dreamy scene conveying peace and relaxation, as well as being quite minimalistic with colour.
While looking at album covers (left side of the board), I wanted to take two things from what I had found. The first being that the serif handwriting font was soft and I would take something similar to that. The second being that the origami made the album stand out and there is something soothing about a shape or objects being crafted from paper so its light and clear. In further exploration of origami for inspiration, I discovered a range of different clouds and went for the ones with the origami boat in the image. I also decided to have a base or an image that partially bleeds off so that there isn’t blue bordering the whole cover.
I drew up a small draft to have a rough idea of what i was doing…
Final Design
So the cover was now looking sharp. I drew the images then cut and stuck them onto the blue paper background. It also allowed me to move things around and see how the page would balance out. I tried to split the page into thirds so the mountain range was the bottom third, and the top cloud would be in the top third so it’s the only thing that takes away from the dotted path and isn’t too distracting but in nevertheless leads the eye through the composition.
The dotted lines were to show a path of the plane but I decided to put the title at the end of the path as the dots already lead the individuals eyes to this main and only bit of text information.
I only used a grey pen to do all the colouring for simplicity and the blue background is the only other colour. I was going to have the writing in orange as it is the contrasting colour to blue for impact but I decided to stick with white as it looks smooth and was truer to my concept of peace and simplicity. The dotted line to leading to the text felt sufficiently to draw the eye.
Conclusion
I am happy with the outcome. I found that the oblique strategies cards were very useful through the whole process. I think I achieved what the first two cards promoted as I didn’t shy away from producing what could be considered a cliché scene for a dreaming/ambient setting yet, the ideas on execution were my own and I trusted them. The only fault I have with the final cover is that it could be executed a little better technically in areas such as cutting out the album title as it looks scruffy. Other than that I love the origami effect and the all round neatness of the other images on the cover. I’m thinking about adding a small airport to the mountain side to further connect to the album title but I don’t want to spoil the serenity and simplicity of the current image.