The Discussion I Don't Know Why I Have To Post, M3

I don’t at all understand why these covers should go in my blog instead of just right here. Seems like needless wasted effort to go to the trouble to post there if I’m just going to post them right here, as I am doing now. Here’s the link I guess (unless you're reading this on my blog).

 

This album cover is for rock band Rise Against’s hardcore melodic punk album Revolutions Per Minute, an album filled with rebellious lyrics and slamming instrumentals. These works encourage people to really take a look at how twisted our system is, and to question our place in it. The album cover succeeds as a cover by creating interesting visuals that incorporate the tone of the album. With the title Revolutions Per Minute we also see some word play at work with the image--revolutions are associated with the violent overturning of a civilization, but it’s also another word for going in a circle or ellipse, and in that vein is associated with the laps such things as wheels, or more pertinently, records/CDs. Bridging these two definitions, we see headphones plugged into a grenade like it’s a phone. The exposure and graininess of the image give off a punk vibe to attract punk fans.    

This is a fantastic album cover for Jonathan Coulton (JoCo)’s Best. Concert. Ever. album. The static in the background implies white noise nonsense--which is kind of the tone of the album. Some of the songs, like “Ikea” or “Shop Vac” or “Creepy Doll,” feel like white noise even though they sound nothing like it--the silliness, repetition, and low stakes of such works are probably largely responsible for that. The static also manages to give off an impression of human presence, like when you look out over a crowd of people, so numerous and far away that you’ve ceased seeing faces. It really looks like JoCo is standing on stage, looking out at the audience at the top of this live recording. He doesn’t have to be anything more than a silhouette to make this work.

This is the album cover for English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, and it’s unlikely you’ve never seen it. It’s one of the most famous pieces of iconography in the 21st century, and it’s scattered across endless shirts, mugs, underwear, plates, etc. It’s a super simple design that’s captured endless imaginations. The triangle acts as a prism--white light goes in, a rainbow comes out, meant to be something of a visual metaphor for what’s supposed to happen when people listen to the album. They come in a blank white slate and leave a rainbow, now fuller, more whole, for having heard it. The music makes you feel and think in ways you hadn’t before.

"Mix-CD" Album Cover Sketches

I made a playlist for my mix tape, which you can find here.  It's called "Past Life Progression" as a play on "Past Life Regression," because these songs all feel very reincarnation-y to me, and reincarnation is a vital part of my belief system, like cosmic recycling.

The following are my sketches for an album cover, all connected to death, rebirth, second sight, and multiplicity of self. Also the storm clouds connect to the song on the album, "Pyrocumulus": 

Identity and Branding In Design

 

Above are my designs for the Identity and Branding in Design project. Up top is the logo for Hudson Valley Inn, designed to look like the acronym HVI stacked vertically into a hotel form, with colors chosen to match the autumnal tourism it depends on. 

Below it is the logo for Endless Orchard, the Hudson Valley Inn's upscale barn, design again to match the colors, and this time the foliage, of the leafing season. 

Below that is the logo for SugarBush Brush, the maple-farm-themed restaurant specializing in all things maple, from maple syrup to maple leaf salad to maple cake, and beyond. 

Finally there's the business card design for Marlin Binding, the manager of SugarBush Brush. Sometimes simple is better, so there's not much to explain. 

Identity and Branding in Design: The Hudson Valley Inn; SugarBush Brush; Endless Orchard

 Pencil sketches:

On the page above I played around a lot with the words "Hudson Valley Inn," and the acronym HVI, and placing them on various structures and natural features. 

             Above, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how I wanted the letters to look in this hotel logo, but I knew I wanted a hotel-like structure forming an H, V, and I through the middle.

Here I started playing with color and added a sun and moon to the design, as many hotel logos contain one or the other.

Here above I started playing with full words, testing them out to see if any could be made into a nice logo. Directly below are a few more experiments, this time with color. I used brown, orange, and red trees to hint at the importance of the tourist-luring leafing opportunities that the Hudson Valley Inn has built its business around (assuming this is a hotel we're making up and not the real Hudson Valley Inn in Newburgh). The S is meant to represent the Hudson River for which the Hudson Valley is named, and again, many hotel logos feature one of our primary celestial bodies, so the O makes an easy sun, and the D provides a nifty opportunity to show the moon. 

The above is a collection of gel pen-colored sketches of the hotel HVI symbol, now experimenting with using trees in place of the hotel towers, to allude more heavily to the business that keeps them afloat, replete with colors more strongly associated with autumn.

The above are sketches for the words "valley" and "inn," trying to make the words look like what they are without losing legibility.

These sketches ^ are logo attempts for the restaurant, SugarBush Brush, a maple farm themed restaurant to go along with the local leafing scene.   

The above is a colored sketch for the bar, Endless Orchard, a facility specializing in alcohol made from locally grown produce. 

Endless Orchard was a hard one---I wanted to do something more symbolic than textual there, so in addition to text I played around with a few different symbols for eternity.

Digital sketches/colors: