Illustrator: Future Alignments

After practicing using illustrator to recreate things, we then went on to create something unique. For this task we were asked to design an album cover, for a hypothetical album called "Future Alignments" (By the artist or band of our choosing)

The first thing I did was look through photos on my phone (which I had taken) which I could potentially use as a background. Since, when looking at other album covers (from the artist I had in mind) quite a few of them had buildings or geometric shapes. After finding the image I wanted to use (Which I have included below), I did a sketch of what the album cover might look like, to get an idea of where the text would go. 

(Photo taken by me, July 2018 in Tate Modern)

The reason I chose to use this image was because it was quite unique and I think that the parallel lines and lights made it fit the "Future Alignments" concept in a way? I also think that the image is a bit disorientating, due to the lines going in different ways. One thing I maybe wish I would have included is the screen/sign that is sort of in the focal point of the image, I think this could have added to the futuristic theme and would have maybe added a bit more colour.

Below is the album I took inspiration from, I think that it is very interesting to look at and uses space and colours well. The only fault I can find with this is that the text is a bit hard to read. 

The singer of this album is called Sou, I found their music through listening to similar songs on Youtube. I don't know much about them, but they have a variety of Japanese original songs and covers on their Youtube channel. Even though I don't understand Japanese, the songs are enjoyable to listen to and are very different from mainstream songs. Also, most of the album covers have lots of detail and quite a good idea about what the album might be about, which is helpful when you don't understand the language.

(Utopia - Sou, Album Art, Spotify Song Link )

I came up with my idea for the album cover, by looking at the Utopia album art and photos of buildings. The common elements in the Utopia album art and a few other albums from the artist is blue/grey colours and futuristic elements. Therefore I wanted to include these in my design. 

The techniques I used were mainly using the pen tool to trace the photo and then adding in the colours and text to add more to the dimension. I also used the "Divide" tool to add in the white parts (on the left side) which were supposed to represent the lights (from original photo).

Some adjustments I made while making this included:

•  Adding another shade of grey to the colour scheme (to help distinguish the different shapes more, without differing too much from the other colours used. I also think this helped to make it look a bit more 3D)
• Using temporary lines to make sure some parts lined up better. This was because after tracing some parts looked a bit un-even.
• Experimenting with outlines/ different colour outlines. (When tracing I had a black outline, however this made the text quite hard to read. So I looked at the design with white outlines as well as no outlines) I also experimented with the text/fonts to make sure it was legible.
• Adding glitch-like? elements. I added a few transparent rectangles and a transparent version of the text to the design to make it look a bit like it was glitching. I think I could have done better with this, but I think the idea is still portrayed. 

Another version of the design

Changes I probably would make to my design, would be experimenting more with the outlines (Since I think there is parts where they are unnecessary?), experimenting with colour schemes and I also would have liked to add more detail to the design; even though I think the kind of simplistic style still has it's own merits. When comparing to the inspiration album art, mine is no where near as good. However with the time and skills I had available, I think it was a good attempt and I think I learnt quite a bit through this exercise.

In terms of design principles:

• I think I could have left more empty space, since I think the design looks slightly too busy.
• I think I made a good use of contrast and cohesion, through the colour scheme.
• I think that the focal points and alignments could have been improved slightly, for example on the blue and white segments on the right don't line up perfectly (which is partly my fault and partly a feature of the original picture) Also I think I could have maybe experimented with the alignments of the text.
• For proximity, I think this is shown through how the different segments of the design have quite consistent colours (eg to the right of the design, all the "top surfaces" from the top right corner are black)

We also had a task to create a logo for the artist, however I didn't have very many good ideas for this and tracing the image for the cover art took longer than I expected so I sort of ran out of time. I did do some sketches for a "future alignments" logo, but I guess this is a good lesson about needing to manage my time better. My concept for this was to have a simple planet icon which was a bit disassembled.