2nd example of cd cover with process-part th

After a bit more brainstorming I came to the concept of using one word to describe the type of music that the band played. I would then use that word as the main piece on the front cover. I chose the word Smooth for the calm music and the word Roughfor the heavy metal music and the word Digital for the electronic music.

I then went out and got myself a copy of Xara3D (USD$45) which I tell you is VERY easy to use for a 3D program. It took a total of 10 minutes to figure out without any tutorials, just playing with the buttons.

I then pumped out the 3D letters into Photoshop an

d then did about 80% of the designing in P

hotoshop and 20% in illustrator for the vectorised pieces. Below you can see the design process I used to create the first CD cover.

You will notice the visual consistency between the three CD covers as we were required to have this between both designs, there were meant to be all from the same publisher. We also had to have all legal requirements on the CD jackets.

The album title was given to us and for the smooth song it was called Mad World, the rock one was called Attitude and the electronic one was called Equinoxe. The first Smooth cover took a day to complete and the attitude one took about half as long as I was more familiar

with what to do and the digital one took about 3 hours.

Below are the final designs, try to compare them to my visual responses up above.

You will notice in the Smooth design, I have used the colours blue and green with an ocean type feel (check out the Jellyfish).

In the Rough design you will notice I have used angry red colours in a grungy chaotic mess that reflects my original musical response. The text was purposely made hard to read to reflect the chaotic nature of the music.

In the Digital one I have used an in-your-face, high energy, bright coloured design which reflects my original music response. You will notice the circles on the back cover, kind of popping as like in my original drawing.

Front Cover

2nd example of cd cover with process-part two

We then had to discuss our result with our peer... All 120 responses from 30 students were pinned to a board and compared. We then had to choose which of our drawings provided the most contrast and you can see number 1 and number 3 had the most contrast so I used these two (I later chose to do number 4 as well). We then had to use these drawings above to develop them into cd covers and the final designs had to strongly reflect the initials graphic responses.

After brainstorming many different ideas, I decided that whatever I was going to do, it was going to be in 3D probably due to the fact that I enjoy my Vodka Bottle project in Cinema 4D so much - that is the beauty of University, you get so much creative freedom!

I then came across this post called 50 Essential Photoshop Text Tutorials and I saw in there a tutorial link to design in 3D (Nik Ainley style). I knew that I wanted to do something like that and I got inspiration from his two pieces that are shown below.

2nd example of cd cover with process-part one

PART ONE

Below you can my four visual responses after listening to the music.

1. The first was a slow, smooth, soft, calm watery type song.

2. The second was a upbeat funky song.

3. The third was a hard rough death metal rock song.

4. The fourth was an electronic digital sounding song.

cd cover reserch

Kerry Plitzer was open to our ideas, giving us free reign to manipulate her photos as we saw fit. she wanted a design tat worked with her jazz-acoustic music style, and referenced a scrapbooking style she'd like to seeincorporated.the designer went with bolder colours and shapes, playing off the title "you took me in" by nestling Lerry's photo inside the shapes.

2nd example of cd cover

1st example of cd cover

1st task

At a minimum you need to research TWO websites to discover the PROCESSES OF HOW CD covers are made.
Consider:

• the inspiration for the cover
• the design and what is meant to represent ( in graphics and colours)
• the materials used including software
• The CD box and the disc, the material used, expense, etc.
• anything you consider to be important in the process of designing and making a CD cover.

Write two posts, one for each designer you have visited about how they go about designing and making a CD cover.

You should aim to include weblinks and images, etc.

Here are some of websites to help you:

http://www.cddesign.com/

http://www.discmakers.com/design/

http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/05/10/how-to-design-a-cd-cover-by-listening-to-music/

example of cd cover