Hello! So, this was quite a simple one. I was asked, "Make a graphic based on a song lyric from your chosen artist for this music project." And since it was so simple, I just kinda did it. There really isn't much to talk about. I could talk about how I came up with it, which I think is quite interesting.
Now, usually, I have some sort of inspiration I have for posters from doing research, like my party and pattern projects, but this one is directly off the dome, things I already had swirling in my head. The first idea I had was to try and make it seem greek. This is because the song 'Again' really has that sort of holiday feel, along with the album cover 'EP' which includes 'Again' and has a blue and white theme overall.
The other main inspiration for what I have made might sound a little weird, and I can't put my finger on what they're exactly called, but I have seen many a poster of lovely views from different countries illustrated to have these big blocks of colours, rather than the many details these views usually have, and I wanted to try and emulate this with what I have made here. I thought it fit well because this reminded me very close to the holiday sort of feeling I have when listening to the song itself.
Okay so doing some research later I did already have this all in mind after looking at my Pinterest board for the song Again by Mind Shrine and the image to my left is the main reason why I wanted to do a similar style. On the Pinterest board also ar warm cosy colours but I went with a more Sun Fun colour pallet because of ease, but if I came back to this project I would absolutely change this. Okay back to normal blog stuff.
Now, I should probably tell you what quote I've chosen for this mini-project, and that is the lyric from the aforementioned song 'Again' and it reads as such, 'Sitting on a chair with a mirror, I’m waiting for you.' Now, this really stood out to me because it made me think a lot. What could this mean? I wasn't too sure at first, so I made the assumption that this song was about a dead lover since there's a mirror and a chair which could be a reference to the famous bloody mary challenge, but now that I reflect upon it, this could be a whole lot more, or a whole lot less. But anyways, this wasn't important to the lyric at hand. To make this graphic reminiscent of the lyric, I decided to actually add these two objects in, A mirror and a Chair.
So, I first made a little concept for what I wanted it to look like. I didn't make any other versions of this, mainly because I wanted this to be finished as soon as possible, since I still have other blogs to write. I made it realistic to a point because I wanted to try and make this look like the other poster that I have shown here, with the big blocks of colour along with the cartoony kind of style. So, I used this as a template and traced over it.
Okay, I gave up. Now, you may be wondering why I did. This is for one simple reason, time. I don't have a lot of that right now, so I feel like it would be understandable if I do not take 5 days to finish a single digital graphic that isn't even my final piece. This is indeed a shame but this is the struggle with art, creating beautiful concepts to then realise mid-development that you don't have enough time.
But do you really think I myself am going to leave you hanging without anything? Well, anything of substance. That is preposterous of me, so Instead I'm going to be making a poster (My Favourite) on Photoshop since I am more familiar with this software. The first thing I will also be doing is drawing out my concepts, and here are my main two.
So these are the two designs that I have come up with. I really like the photoshop that I already have made, and I would love to improve it but sadly aI doesn't have enough time, as I have mentioned some times before. I mainly wanted to mess around with the overall colours in the shot along with the text I will be using, since I have other hidden Pinterest boards that are about posters, and they do some really cool effects with text and just in general really. I think I'm gonna try and make Design 2 since it's simpler and in my opinion bold.
After trying to make Design 2, I found out it's actually quite hard. This is because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, which I blame only myself for. But, I do know how to make things light Design 1, so that's exactly what I have done next.
Now, the main thing you will notice is the big black border that this piece has. This is not present in the final product. You may ask yourself "Why?" This is because, for me at least, it really doesn't go with the lyric of the song, nor the overall vibe of the song which is quite calm with light colours and does not match with the deepness of black, but let's analyse this first, just because I wanna talk about this.
Well, what mediums did I use to make this? I mainly just used Adobe Illustrator, since I barely knew how to use it well enough to distort the text to a degree that I am happy with. With this tool, it also had the right font that I wanted, which was one 'Baskerville Old Face', which for I really fit the feeling of the song, of it being quite mature but being very flow-ey. I also used Adobe Photoshop to get the Mind Shrine logo from their EP, just because it's quite easy to use and does the job as well as I need it.
Now, what makes this suitable for its purpose? Well, it first includes the lyric at hand. This is suitable because the brief was to make a graphic based on a lyric, and since this band that I have chosen is very very underground, I feel like it would make more sense to have the quote there. Another attribute that makes this suitable for its purpose is the Mind Shrine logo. This is because when people see this, they will know that this is from the band, rather than just this being some weird quote from the internet or something along the lines of such. One more reason why this is suitable for the purpose is its shape of it. I will talk about the shape later as a point of why I like it, but it is also important when it comes to its purpose, since this is such a dramatic shape people are drawn to it, meaning people will read the text, keeping eyes on the product for longer.
Why do I like this? The main reason why I like this is the chaotic placement of the letters all in one space. This is because, to me, it is very pleasing to the eye because all the words are there but they're simply in an interesting and pleasing shape. Pleasing not in the traditional satisfactory way, but pleasing as in it is nice to look at. Another reason why I like this is because of the letters themselves. This is a bit more personal compared to "Oh it looks pretty" because I spent an awfully long time looking up tutorials on how to do this, mainly a tutorial on how to move anchor points on a shape by MaschiTuts, and the effect I was able to create with this small amount of information is satisfactory.
This doesn't mean it is perfect though, so I would like to talk about a point and maybe another about what could be improved upon this asset in some of these letters. Now, we can see that some of these have really fluid transformations and look like they were supposed to be stretched out, but others are simply not as much, like the G in the bottom row, at least for me it looks really unnatural and I would fix this by spending a lot more time on these small areas to make sure they look really good. apart from this though, I am really happy with this.
So, I haven't even gotten into the main graphic I have made for this, so I think I should probably get a move on with that, and so I will now.
So, as you can tell from this blog post I'm trying a lot of new things, including making my final products have a white border rather than a beige one, to make sure the final product even after scrolling through the entire thing is eye-catching compared to the rest of these photos. But enough about that, I am really happy with this overall, I think it is amazing, although there are flaws, let's talk about them right now.
So, what mediums were used here? Quite a few. I know I keep saying mediums to then continue to tell you everything that I have used but that's because I just find it really fun to talk about. I have mainly used photoshop to composite the photos together, illustrator to make and edit the text, and photoshop once more to put the filters on top to get that retro kind of look.
So, why is this suitable for the task at hand? This is quite simple. We first have objects that reflect (hehe pun) on the lyrics, which are a chair and a mirror. We also have the quote in the sky as well which can help the viewer of the graphic understand what quote this is supposed to be referencing. The colour choice of primarily blue and white is also appropriate because the album cover that this song is off of is also blue and white, along with the song to me giving that sort of holiday vibe, and Greece was the main place I got this feeling from. We also have the name of the band in the graphic as well. This is appropriate because people will then know where the lyric is from. One more thing that makes this suitable for the task at hand is the grain that's seen across the image. This is good because the song itself has an older kind of feeling, so to compliment this I used a grain.
Why do I like this? I like this because of the text. It does a really nice job of filling out the entire graphic rather than just having a random blank piece of blue in the middle of the page. With this, I also really like the colours used. I made sure they were a bit more vibrant but also had warmth across the graphic which gives a cosy but summer sort of vibe. Another thing I like about this is the slight glow on the text. This makes it stand out and gravitate your eye towards the text, which is supposed to be the main focal point of the image, with the chair and the mirror being second equally.
So, what could I have done better? This is quite simple. I could have first made Mind Shrines name clear in the graphic. This could have been in the bottom left or right corner. This is because although their name is indeed on there, I don't think it is big enough on there for people to recognise this was by them without just looking somewhere else after seeing this graphic.
I would also mess around with the text a little more. I like the tilt I put on it, but I am not too sure
if I put it in the right spot, maybe a bit more central would have been appropriate rather than in between the doors. apart from that though, this is great!
Finally, would I do something like this in the future? I think I would. This has been very fun to do and the final product came out really well! The brief left a lot on the table to create new and interesting ideas.
Well, this was a big one with the idea after idea, but I am happy that I documented that all and showed you that I don't just make a single idea, and instead I suffer from bad ideas and concepts that I am not bothered to learn how to do. But that is all, goodbye.
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