The Secret 7" design competition- This year i chose the band HAIM and there single 'Better off' to try and visualise onto a 7" album cover, I have designed covers for albums before but not necessarily to this style of music so that is why I chose it, as well as the fact that it was the one song when I listened to them all that I came up with a concept that I would like to follow.
After listening to the song a good few times, it seems that the rhythm throughout the song produced by the drums, was one of the key elements that gave the song it's unique 'folk / R&B' style.
Being a drummer and a musician myself for many years, I have always thought the shapes and patterns used throughout the theory of music are visually incredibly interesting, so I notated a small (1 bar) element of the main drum groove.
This is where I wanted to personify the notation to relate more to the girls in the band. The song is in 4/4 which means there are 4 beats that must be made up to complete the bar, there are only 3 members of HAIM, all girls and all sisters. the song is also called 'Better off' so by combining all of these factors it resulted in the first 3 beats representing the 3 sisters in the band and the 4th is the element that they are 'Better off' without.
I thought this would be a better way of representing the song, rather than trying to find meaning within the song, because in many cases the song is interpreted differently by every listener.
As the notations still look like music notes I thought it would be more relevant if they did visually look like the heads of girls or at least in some abstract way.
To give the notion of traveling / moving on in life, I thought the textured element that the notes sit on both represent the paper that the notes have been written on as well as the road / path that they are walking along in life.
After making some adjustments, this was the first outcome I produced, which i then took to peers to ask for their feedback and opinion to whether it suits the song and the artist.
the response s I received were mostly about the bland colours of the cover which doesn't really suit the "hipster" nature of the band.
I designed this element all digitally which was probably not the best idea, but sometimes I find it easier to create a rane of different visual concepts on the computer than I do drawing on a sheet of paper.
As the new colours really started to take over the visuals it really didn't suit the textured road/ path I had used in my initial design, I then started playing around with tiling the pattern I had created out of the drum notation to represent the 3 member of the band.
After tiling the pattern I thought it fit well with the visuals and also gave a feel of a large unnoticeable population, which I then separated out 3 of the group to highlight that these are the ones that stand out and are 'Better off' without everybody else.
this is the outcome that I was happy with and the one I chose to submit, I realise the concept is quite abstract but these final visuals created I personally feel suit the song and the "style" of the band.
This brief was practice for me to start working quickly and making informed design decisions, so I finished it in about 3 hours overall, it was nice to be able to work quickly through a piece and I intetend to do more of these quick turn around briefs as I feel this is an area that I fall down on, and usually spend too long making decisions and wasting time instead of just getting on with designing.
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