SECRET 7 - BRIEF - FINAL & EVALUATION

After much thought, I decided that the original scanned in version of the dead flower was the best design that I had created - not only does it have the best relevance to the song but the incredible detail which can be seen within the design really helped me to think about the meaning of the song. It was interesting that after much development and experiments with colour through various cover designs that this scanned in flower was the version that I am submitting. 

Cover description - 

Castles Made of Sand - Nothing will live forever, the flower is a visual representation of how even the most beautiful of things has to come to an end and this image has frozen that memory in time much like how Hendrix used the song to do the same. 

Evaluation 

Overall I think that this brief was a success, I was able to test my skills in a number of ways. Firstly limiting myself to Photoshop made me think more out of the box than I normally would and I feel that this has given me the best outcome I could have come up with for the song. I was able to learn new Photoshop skills and improve my overall skillset within the programme which is very important to have good Adobe knowledge as it can help to me reach new depths within my design work. The timescale was something that I thought might make this brief more difficult, however, having this short time frame meant that my decision making and focus for the brief was much quicker this is something that I will have to be doing more of as I develop into a better designer. I can only hope that my design is now strong enough to win a place in the Secret 7" exhibition which would be a great thing to have on my records as credibility within the design world. 

SECRET 7 - BRIEF - DEVELOPMENT & FINAL

Out of all the designs that I had created I was able to narrow it down to these as my final 7 designs. 

Each design has its own quirks that I liked so it was difficult to choose the final design. After much time thinking about which it should be and asking peers for their opinion I came to the decision that it needs to be the most ambitious yet simplest one of them all. In my opinion, it was either 2, 5, 6 or 7 as both the timelapse of the flower and the dead flower were the perfect representation of nothing lives forever and the flower in that particular state showed this best. 

SECRET 7 - BRIEF - IDEA DEVELOPMENT

Through my both my research and my visual research, I was able to get a good understanding of the meaning of the song and how I want to interpret it through simple image manipulation. As I am testing my skills with Photoshop I needed some material to work with so that I could start creating something that was more representative of the song. 

My research has also given me a basis to go from when designing - Use of Halftone which is something that lends itself to the 60s theme and as well as this the use of bold and bright colours the cover needs to have the psychedelic vibe which can only be achieved through the use of colour and ambiguous design. 

• First of all, I started with the Lotus flower as my main point of imagery for the song. 
• Used a close-up time lapse of the flower opening to get the images I needed to bring my first ideas to life. 
• Screenshotted each stage of the flower opening
• I then cut out each one from the background and made sure that I had the same dimensions for each stage of the flower opening - this is the start of the cover designs I can use all of these flowers in many ways to create a design for the song. 

             

Idea 1

• After creating each stage of the flower opening I then started to use Photoshop settings and effects to get the desired look that I felt best represented the era of music and the song itself. 
• Throughout all the designs I have experimented with bold and vibrant colours that lend themselves to the style of music. 
•  This concept shows the flower opening to its fullest state which I wanted to show as a journey through time - time being one of the most prominent themes within the song.
• I used halftone and gradient mapping to achieve this look - as I thought this was most representative of a lot of artwork from this era. It also helps to make the flower be seen in a more ambiguous style.  

• Colour experimentation was very important part of this stage as once I had the visuals down it was more about getting the right feel and tone of voice from the colours. I was influenced by the colours used in Hendrix's artworks. The blues and purples I feel worked the best as they give more depth to the overall image. 
• Also experimenting a lot with image placement the last design that you can see is multiple flowers on top of each other to create the texture that can be seen - however, I left that this was too ambiguous as you cannot work out what it is. 

Idea 2

• Having got feedback on my initial designs it was suggested that I make the cover simpler - here I looked at the four main stages of the opening flower and the journey that is involved with that.
• The four flowers there to represent the chorus of the song - "And so castles made of sand, Fall in the sea, eventually"

Idea 3 

• Taking influence from Pop Art - popular art movement in the 60s which was pioneered by the likes of Andy Warhol and Keith Herring. 
• Also trying to remain experimental with the layout of the flower and the colour combinations used - however, I don't think these designs particularly lend themselves to the vibe of the song. 

Idea 4 

• Again continuing the Pop Art theme but this time I decided to use the different flower to see how it would look compared with the original flower that I had designed. 
• I did not like how these designs looked together, however, I the more that I designed the better at colours in Photoshop - making it easier to see which colours work best to represent the song.

Idea 5 

• Looking for further development I came across a dead flower on the floor and thought this would be the perfect representation of the song. 
• Rather than photographing the flower I decided to scan in the flower to a very high resolution which as a great result - there is incredible detial with the image and this meant to that had a lot to work with.
• During the scanning stage, I pulled apart the flower to get different effects which I think worked very well in later stages of the artwork. 
• Having got the scans I was then able to work with the image in the same way that I had previously on the other developments. This brought out much detail within the flower and experimenting with colour helped to make the link with Hendrix's music. 
• Having a love for typography I also wanted to see whether I could introduce this into the design - however, both myself and my peers thought that the flower was much stronger alone as it gives the more ambiguous angle that I want to achieve. 

Idea 6 

• As further development I did some very quick drawings without taking my pencil of the paper -I then scanned this so that I could manipulate it within Photoshop but I was not very happy with the outcome, however, the texture within the drawing was something that I liked a lot - this is something that I want in my final design. 

Feedback - Selecting best designs

• Having created many designs in various different ways I thought it was time to move on as I am pushing myself for time with the sort timescale that I set myself. 
• To get to the final stage I showed my designs to my peers and asked them which they thought the best fit with the theme and which designs were the strongest to take on to the final stage.

SECRET 7 - BRIEF - VISUAL RESEARCH

Visual research - used to as a guide for styling my interpretation of Castles Made of Sand. 

I explored the many different covers that Hendrix has used over the years, this helped me to understand how I should approach designing the cover for the song. 

• Rich with vibrant colours - Hendrix comes from the beginnings of psychedelic rock, which uses many trippy and "out of this world" type visuals. Throughout his artwork, you can see a great use of bold and striking colours which are representative of that rock movement and I think it is very important to include this in my designs.
• Texture - a lot of the covers from the 60s have great added texture either because of the medium in which the artwork was created or because of the age of the sleeve design. This will be an important asset to the cover design. 
• All of his covers include portraits of him mostly taken by Karl Ferris - he was a designer and photographer of album covers at the time his work lends itself to the psychedelic rock scene. A lot of his work which can be seen below uses and takes a lot of influence from the psychedelic scene. 

Karl Ferris - Photography*

The 60s Record Sleeves 

• The 60s was a great time for music as this is when people really started to find the individuality through both the music and visually (record sleeves). It is interesting to see how the record covers from this era have been created as they wouldn't be much different to now. 
• A lot of the design is very bold and there is a lot of colour involved which I feel this is something that has to be very prominent in my design for Hendrix. As the design is for S7 it means using type for the name etc is not allowed so I feel that though the type is important it is also just as important to represent the song as visually as possible without it. 

Song meaning visuals - After having looked into the song in some depth and think about what it meant to Hendrix and what he was trying to say within the song I thought about how I could visually represent what he was saying. As the design is an interpretation of the song I want my design to be ambiguous as possible having to make the audience think properly about what the song means.   

• The song is a symbol for the course of change in life. Things in our life have to end at some point good or bad. 
• Things come and go - the sea in the song is representing time ticking by
• The castles are memories or events that have been washed away by the infinite continuation of time (sea). 
• "All good things much come to an end"
• "Nothing will last forever" 
• As psychedelic rock is a very spiritual thing and you can start to make links between psychedelic rock and religions such as Hinduism which has already been done by Hendrix himself (Axis: Bold as Love cover) which shows him stood next to their God Vishnu. 
• Making that link with Hinduism then brought me on to flowers but in particular, the lotus flower - Many of the gods and goddesses of Hinduism are linked to the flower, for example, the goddess of prosperity, Laxmi, is usually depicted as being seated atop a fully opened lotus flower. Likewise, Brahma, the god of creation is depicted as emerging from a lotus that crawls from the Naval of the sustainer Lord Vishnu. 
• In this case, a flower is the perfect visual representation of something beautiful that has to come to an end. The flower has a short lifespan and eventually has to die yet when it is dead we can still remember the good things about it and the joy that came along with it. 

SECRET 7 - BRIEF - SONG RESEARCH

Of the seven songs, I chose Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made of Sand I did not want to spend too long selecting the song so as a selection process I thought it would be more interesting to select my favourite from the 7 as this should make it easier to produce. 

I started to research into the song I on a contextual level - which I think gives more context to a design rather than trying to just interpret it from the name. This uncovered a lot that I didn't know about the song in terms of the meaning behind it and how of important the track is to Hendrix's legacy.  


JIMI HENDRIX - CASTLES MADE OF SAND 

Lyrics - 

Down the street you can hear her scream "you're a disgrace"
As she slams the door in his drunken face,
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool

He cries "Oh girl, you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?"
Against the door, he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green

And so castles made of sand,
Fall in the sea, eventually

A little Indian brave who before he was ten,
Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends,
And he built a dream that when he grew up,
He would be a fearless warrior Indian Chief

Many moons passed and more the dream grew stronger,
Until tomorrow, he would sing his first war song,
And fight his first battle, but something went wrong,
Surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night

And so castles made of sand,
Melts into the sea, eventually

There was a young girl, whose heart was a frown,
'Cause she was crippled for life, and she couldn't speak a sound
And she wished and prayed she could stop living,
So she decided to die

She drew her wheelchair to the edge of the shore, and to her legs, she smiled
"You won't hurt me no more"
But then a sight she'd never seen made her jump and say
"Look, a golden winged ship is passing my way"
And it really didn't have to stop, it just kept on going

And so castles made of sand
Slips into the sea, eventually

Notes from the lyrics

• "Castles Made of Sand" is a sad commentary on the futility of life.

• The first verse is about a formerly loving couple reduced to a screaming, drunken mess. 

• The second is about a brave Indian chief who gets slaughtered in his sleep the night before a battle. 

• It ends with the slightly more uplifting tale of a handicapped little girl who rolls her wheelchair to a cliff and nearly rolls it off until the sight of a "golden winged ship" makes her reconsider.

• Many have argued that this song is Jimi reflecting on painful memories from his childhood, including his parents' separation and his mother's illness, though Hendrix himself never confirmed that. 

• Chorus - This is the inevitability of death, but also the beauty and fragility of life represented by a sand castle. Nothing is certain and nothing lasts forever, eventually, things will fall apart. It could also mean the fragility of dreams that are often unfulfilled.

• "Many moons passed and more the dream grew stronger" - More time passed, and the closer he got to realize his dream.

• "So she decided to die" - She’s decided on suicide to end her pain.

• The significance of sand within the track as a metaphor "for the temporary nature of existence, of time, slipping away, how nothing can be taken for granted – love, loyalty, family bonds, and friendship"

SECRET 7 - BRIEF

Brief - 

Design/interpret a record cover for one of the seven tracks available - to make this brief more of a personal challenge I want to use this brief to help improve two skills which I feel that can be put to the test during this brief.

Firstly I have only given myself a maximum of 3 days to complete the brief. I want to test myself for working on a quick turn around as this is something that I am going to have to be doing much more once I graduate, it will also help me to stop messing around with smaller things and just concentrate on producing a quality final piece as my design process will be a lot faster so I have less time to think about it. 

I am also trying to improve my Adobe skills as much as I can, Photoshop is something that I have always shied away from but only now I feel that it would benefit my skills if I know more about it. I am going to try and design this sleeve using Photoshop as my main programme to test my skills. 

The tracks include:

• The Clash - I'm Not Down
• London Grammar - Help
• Eurythmics - I Saved The World Today
• Manic Street Preachers - No Surface All Feeling
• Primal Scream - Damaged
• Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over
• Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made Of Sand

Background: Secret 7” takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then invite creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style for every 7”. 700 unique sleeves are exhibited before going on sale on a first come, first served basis priced at £50 each. You don’t know who created the sleeve, or even which song it’s for until you have parted with your cash - the secret lies within.

Mandatory requirements - 

1. Your design must not include the artist’s name or the song title
2. Concentrate your design on what will be the front, only this will be visible in the exhibition
3. Dimensions should be 182 x 182mm + 3mm bleed 
4. Your file must be produced in CMYK so it’s set-up to be printed. Any PMS specials will be converted. Metallic or fluorescent inks cannot be reproduced
5. Your file must be 300dpi
6. Your file must be saved as either a Tiff, JPEG or PDF
7. Do try and reduce the size of your file as much as possible 10MB maximum
8. You can submit a sleeve design for as many of our tracks as you like, and more than one design for each track.

Timescale: 2/3 Days

Deadline - 24th April