Mind Shrine is my second favourite non-signed artist. I say second because my favourite is a rapper called Lunchbox, but he's so underground that he doesn't have a genius page, and I can't find his lyrics anywhere or find his social media, so Mind Shrine will do!
To add a little more information, I have been asked to choose a specific artist or band who is unsigned, and make a graphic for them. This could be much, this could be an album cover or anything inspired by the artist. For this one, I have chosen Mind Shrine. The specific research I am supposed to do is to look at what they make, from social media, to album covers, to music, so let's get right into it.
okay so I lied. what I have been actually told to do is to talk about the band themselves, Mind Shrine, and so I will. This is a band made in Huston Texas, but they don't make the type of music you would expect to come out of Texas, instead they make music you can really relax too, with most of their songs having a guitar as their main riff. The name of the band members are Jess Howard, Richie Alejandro, Bradley DeAnda and Brian Gonzales.This band has multiple platforms, like on Spotify, TikTok, Youtube and Instagram as Mind Shrine. They don't post commonly but its nice when they do. They also have a band camp website, which is mind shrine.bandcamp.com.
Well its all good knowing what they sound like and what platforms they have, but what is their overall look of the band? For me, the look of Mind Shrine is a focus on bright colours and a focus on a 70's sort of look, since they mostly post pictures of themselves on instagram (@mindshrine) with what or look like older cameras from the same generation, along with much of their promotional work, even with their album covers looking like they could even be from the 70's but I wouldn't be surprised if they were new and its just editing
Now that this stuff is covered, let's look at the pre existing content they have up. First piece I would like to look at is their latest post on instagram, which is a post trying to get people interested in their opening show for their new EP, "Is It You?"
This is a pretty cool graphic I will admit. I love the overall composition and I really wanna learn how to make cool graphics like this, in particular the top half with its cool fade. But back to the usual.
So, what mediums do I think have been used to make this? I can tell you off the bad that this was all made in Adobe Illustrator. This is because of certain aspects like the very precise text and the graphic at the top, which looks to have blur on it along with a noise pattern over it. I would assume other things too like if they've used the pen tool and that, but I feel like I'm just getting into pointless information (Please let me know if I am or not)
What makes this a good graphic for its purpose? For this, we need to highlight its purpose. Now, for me, it isn't hard to tell that this is supposed to be the main promotional piece for people to be interested to go to the release show. Now, why is this good at its job? This is good at its job because It shows a large graphic that's quite eye-catching, since it's quite fuzzy, making people want to try and make out what it is supposed to be. With this, we can see they have a hard divide on the bottom to show the show information which is in white. The graphic also leads the eye down to the show information, since the rings look like they are going down on the graphic. To talk about the bottom part, we have key information about the show as well like the locations they will be at, the name of the band, the name of the show, the date and the name of the website if people need more information. The font choice is also quite nice as well, with the "IS IT YOU?" font being my favourite.
To continue on this last part, why do I like this design? Well, first of all, I like the colours used. The big purple really is a cosy colour to look at. The idea of using the multi-coloured rings with the blur is also great, for it brings quite an interesting look to have. The grain that's been put over the graphic also just ties together the overall graphic, since it gives you that texture that is missing. As aforementioned before, the font choice is really nice, with a majority of the text having a white inside and black outline makes the white stand out more and makes sure that it doesn't look very dark.
If I could, what would I change about this? The only thing I would probably change about this is the shape of the overall graphic, for it to be more of a poster shape, mainly because I both really like posters and the boxy shape isn't the most appealing in my opinion. With this also, I would change the "WP" logo on the purple graphic so it doesn't have the black part since it doesn't fit with the rest of the vibe we have going on here.
Well, that was quite fun i will admit. from looking at regular album arts to something that's a little more in my lane, well appeals to me more, is a lot more enjoyable. Well, this time I wanna look at another album. With this, I also don't know who designed it, but this is EP, by Mind Shrine.
This is my favourite album they have made. For me they really capture the summer kind of vibe, of being in a different country like Greece, which is reflected in the blue and white theme of the album cover. The music is also just great in this one, for it really does remind me of a out of country holiday, just relaxing and enjoying the beach view. Now, onto the analysation.
What mediums do I think have been used to create this graphic? Easily, this is quite digital. This is because of the size of the band, probably not wanting to spend a lot of money making a physical piece for their album cover. We can see though that it looks like its a piece of paper with the wrinkles in the what could be paper, so I could only assume they used photography of a real piece of paper, then overlayed it onto the album cover, to add a little more depth.
What makes this a good album cover? This is a good album cover because of a couple of things. First reason why this is a good album cover is because of of the fact that the bands name is on here. Now, with bigger artists who have made viral hits they don't really need to put their name onto the cover since they are so infamous. This is different with smaller artists and bands though, since they want as many people as possible to know about them, and something as simple as scrolling past their song on a playlist, it is vital to capture the listeners attention, and one good way to do that is by having clear to read text, especially of the name of the band/artist. Another aspect of this album cover that I find quite good is how it matches the music inside. This is most prominent with their colour way of blue and white, which for me really reminds me of a Sumer vacation, and the music also reminds me of this sort of environment. It's important to make sure that your album cover reflects the music of the song itself, so people will have some sort of idea what the music will be like before they even listen to it, and when you do this effectively you are able to capture your target audience really well.
What do I like about this album cover? I really ike the symbols and small pictures used inside. Things like the boy running away and the hand is really tasteful with filling out the cover without said cover looking like it has too little. With this, I also really like the addition of the boarder around the hand and the name of the band. This helps the eye focus on the more important things in this cover. One more thing I really like about this cover is the slight texture we have here. It looks like its a bit old, with the blue flaking off, along with the wrinkling of the what could be assumed paper. It adds another level of detail.
If I could, what would I change or add to this? I feel like this could really do with adding the individual band members on the cover, which would make people stay and look at the cover for longer, and could possibly make people more interested in buying the album. I would also make the three symbols on the left bigger, since although I do like how it looks, I feel like it would look better with bigger pictures.
That was quite fun, I like the album cover quite a bit, although now doing this I regret not doing their newest album, "IS IT YOU?" because it basically ticks off my complaints of this one. Anyways though, the last piece of media I wanna look at
I will be honest, this is actually the cover for a video, which is an animation of this exact picture, so I don't feel too bad about using a video and analysing such like a graphic. This one is also really cool, although it does not look like the cover for the album at all, they're using the wrong colours. But besides this, I shall continue.
Well. what mediums ave been used to make this? Like the last promotional graphic that Mind Shrine has uploaded, this is made using digital tools and photography. We can tell because we can't see any glint from the old TV screen, if this was a recording of a real TV showing this, meaning that the entire effect is completely done via editing software like Premiere Pro Now, I do say that there is still photography because of the picture in the back, which looks to be a flip phone from the 90's or later, I'm honestly not too sure. It would be really hard to create an entire new drawing of a flip phone, when you could instead take a picture of one and put a filter over it, which is what I think they have done here.
Why is this a good promotional piece for Mind Shrine? This is because of the nostalgic look of the overall piece. This is because the demographic for their music is probably born around 1995 or sooner and would have a strong attraction to the "good old days". Another reason why this is a good graphic is because of the colours used. The blue, white and pink work surprisingly well in this context, making a lovely image overall.
Why do I like this graphic? I really like it for the filters that it has over it. I would absolutely love to learn how to do this in photoshop, since its a really interesting look to it and I'd definitely use it on some posters I could make. I also really like the font used in the background, its quite cube-y and has an overall robotic design that I could definitely use. The last thing I would comment on is the main graphic in the background, which is the flip phone. It really wraps the entire thing together, since he promotional work is that they have a phone number you can call to find out if it is "you", along with the overall graphic just being pretty.
So, if I could change anything or add to this graphic, what would I? the only thing I would add is probably some sort of hashtag that people could use to talk about this. This is because it would both look nice, but also drive people to post content about the phone number, and in tern the album. but apart from that, I think this is a really good social media post.
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