Enrichment

The past two weeks have been used as an enrichment programme whilst our 149 DVA Typography 1 is being marked and assessed. The brief given asked to re-design an existing album cover for a re-release in the market, I played around with a few different bands such as Oasis, Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets however, I focused my direction on The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (soundtrack of the film) due to my love of the film and my recent journey I ventured on by delving into the connection of the film to Lewis Carroll's book 'Through the Looking Glass' (all in my post Through the Looking Glass/The Beatles).

The Original CD cover released in 1967.

My version of the CD cover with front cover and back cover of the insert.

I wanted to recreate that very 'trippy' and psychedelic feel of the film and their music, I believe I enforced this with my choice of background. A poster my papa gave me before I came back to Uni after the Christmas break, an original 1960's - 1970's piece of psychedelia artwork (which also glows neon under a backlight). I chose a clean white typeface instead of a colour as I felt it would get too lost within the pattern and overlaying tones, this clean feel continued on the back cover of the insert. I added a small logo (below) constructed from overlaid shapes in vibrant colours to refer back to the front design. I added the numbers 46 in the centre as this is how many years since the first release. 

The reverse of the CD, below in stages of development - (the final had a barcode in the right hand corner) The least strongest design I feel of the task. 

I tried to connect the two sides with the use of the colour green in the pattern and then by filling in the title with the same pattern. I kept the background white for a clean feel for consistency and a more modern twist on the CD.

Inside the booklet I created a collage of photos I took from The Beatles Story Museum in Liverpool whilst on a visit a few years back. 

 I believe my final design of the front to be very resolved however some feedback from todays session allowed me to view it from another perspective. A few suggestions and ideas were formed from our group critque today, these were that the back felt disconnected from the rest of the design in particular the back as it felt too too cluttered by the size of the text. An interesting opinion from a peer I had never thought about was that the typeface I had chosen to use for the main titles were overused in Graphic Design and I was advised to steer away from it in future projects. A few concepts for development were to perhaps have the pattern wrap around the CD case so the viewer would be able to follow the lines bending around, another was to move my logo from inside the CD to the back as t was a very strong element and then have the track list below in a small size. I mentioned how the original poster lights up under a black light, my tutor then thought it could be a quite interesting for this to be created with the CD. 

During this week I also found a documentary through my research on BBC four called The Golden Age of the Album. The trailer shows records flying through space which I found very inspiring for one of my other projects to create an educational website looking at the Moon and its portrayal in the media and art (post shortly to follow). A few of my appointed topics to focus on are such things as news headlines, films, music, literature and fashion so I feel definitely an interesting video to think about for the developing concept of my webpage. 

NAP x