Gaseous Outcome.

Closing into the final deadline this week has been a pivotal week in our development and full creation of the assignment tangibles. With the logo already finalised, finished and fully polished off; our total focus fell on the foundations in which the logo mixed with the music and research presented us with. Alongside our earlier work we needed to have our final CD cover idea presented today, not totally finished; but something that would lead and be very similar to the final handed in work. I'd got some really strong ideas and had virtually developed a finished piece with one of them, which I presented in the seminar groups on Tuesday. I feel it got good feedback and people were pleased with the work I did, there wasn't too many complaints when it came to criticism and the ones that cropped up had already been noticed by me and changes planned for the future. Although I still like this design, I don't think it's as good as I could make it or as good as another idea could be produced. I think the composition especially of the pipework is done quite poorly which leads to it not having a great presence in the front cover. Also when looking at it alongside professional CD covers I do not think it would hold its weight very well; just for the simple fact it doesn't jump out of your with any kind of design swagger or smooth graphics; it's a bit plain. This is the main reason for my developing other ideas as much as I have this one, so I can be happy with knowing the final design is the best I could create.

The logo I've developed I feel suits the record label, but not only that I think it really suits the style of my music, originally it looked alot more like a sports logo; but with the recently developed side of it.. I think the logo flows alot more. Symbolising the music and label, with the smooth and clear curves mixed with the sharp points and flat diagonal of the left side, as Emit and it's music it quite a varied range and you never seem to know what your going to get when it comes to the records released.

We're sharply coming to the end of our first year, I think there's a continuous feeling throughout the group that it's so sudden; on reflection at break today over our first day and the activities we did: it really just seems like only yesterday we were talking our introductory walk around Thornes Park and getting to know each other. Over this past year I've seen us really grow as a group and individuals have come together to make it an enjoyable place to learn and design, which is one of the main reasons the year has flown by. Another reason for this is the amount of work we've done over this year, the speed it has really seemed like we've started one assignment then finished it in no time at all. There has always been a lot of work going on at once and the demand asked of us has always been high, so there was no time to flounder around.

Over these next few weeks there won't be a splendid amount of work to do, most of it will be polishing off already worked out ideas and a lot of time spent on the A1 assignment. I think this will be my biggest effort of the year, I know theres alot to do when it comes to A1; especially I've a lot of annotation to do with the inspiration I've been sticking in my sketchbook throughout the year. And also some of the annotations on on developmental work I've done this term, With the added relief of having to stick in loads of previous free sheets, but this part will all be over soon.. eager to look forward to the next year.

Musically Inclined

Developmental work has a been a big part of my last week, I not only really started to develop my original ideas and previous designs to a better standard but I continued creating even more ideas, through many different mediums. I thought this would help me broaden and expand my range of ideas and give me other elements I could bring into my final design. I also started to sketch to a more accurate standard than I had done before, I felt that with the adding of annotations would really be able to present my developmental ideas and give the marker a lot more of an idea of the actual thing I was going for.

Last week I also finished my final logo which I will upload later, I'm happy with the developmental process that I went through to get to my final design. It shows a clear start to where the idea came from and exactly how I've developed it throughout individual stages, I also showed where I'd tried to use that idea to develop other ways and similar designs based around this initial idea. I previously thought I'd finished my logo, but last week I decided to round the corners on the edges, I just think this made it a lot stronger for the branding and also made my logo relate more to the 'ambient' feel a lot better. Just for the fact it made it abit more natural, I was going by the thought process that my logo before this would of related to a sports maybe surf clothing company a lot more than it would an ambient record label.

I've really been getting along with my CD cover this week, especially when it came to my final design. I set everything up towards the guidelines and started final design work on the concept I had chosen to develop on screen this week. So far it's turned out quite well, I originally went for a floating island in the background idea giving it an eerie effect and hopefully quite space age trying to represent the music on the actual disk. Especially when it had a factory ontop of the island that produced gas, making it kind of a subliminal message towards the person who might buy this record. Then I developed this idea with a planet instead of the floating island thinking that the island might be abit tacky. I now prefer the one with the planet, I've messed around with the factory ontop of the planet; but I think overall just having the planet coming through the smoke gives it a stronger concept and space effect more accurately representing my music.

The Coverage

I've really been focusing on my CD cover over this past week, trying to get some solid ideas down on paper for when I started moving to Adobe Photoshop. Though I did some small developmental work on Photoshop throughout the week, just so I could my brain onto the design path. Since over the years I've seemed to work better straight on the screen, messing around with stuff and seeing what happens. I think this course has changed the way I design, especially with the developmental work; I've started to prefer to design on paper first and get ideas down, develop them to see where an idea can go. It saves alot of time in the final process of designing, so that there arn't millions of wasted final designs that didn't go according to plan, because I didn't know exactly what I was doing until it happened on screen.

As the week progressed I began to gather more and more ideas, especially since I had started properly researching into CD Covers and found loads of inspirational artwork to spur me on. Even just going threw artwork that wasn't really suitable for my particular genre helped me get ideas, I really liked some of the conceptual photography for bands like 'Blur' and their cover 'The Great Escape', covers that really mean something from a metaphorical standpoint.

I've finalised my logo and really worked on the whole concept of it, due to suggestions made by Steve I made the lines going diagonal on the left edge lineup, instead of the 'e' moving straight down. I think this had made my overall logo a lot better flow, giving more structure. This gives me a stronger brand name and company recognition, hopefully making the business more money in the process as people can really recognise the whole company from just the body of this logo. Not only have I finalised the development of my logo, I've also started taking it to next generations and given it subtle effects to just add a little bit of flare and shine. I think this will help finish the logo off just that bit more and hopefully add strength.

This week I'm really going to make my CD covers into something special, start adding some major Photoshop photoshop effects. Try my best to convey the music that's on the album by with lighting effects and warps. But still trying to retain an ery natural feel, something along the sides of an Aphex Twin effect, mixing the electronic and the natural to create a biotech feel. I'm going to see what photographs I can get to manipulate and create this kind of effect.

Eeee.

This week has been a swamp with the letter e's, as far as the eye could see.. looking around in class means your inundated with logo's, emitting rays of radioactive waste, e's dancing and waving. A whole variety. It's pretty safe to say we as a class have come up with a good range of designs for this logo project, from what I've seen I can see some very solid ones forming in class, and I know that with a little tweakage they could cut the mustard against professional logo's. At the moment I'm fairly happy with the way this project is going, and am enjoying all the sketchbook work, drawing and manipulating; but by the end of the assignment, I'm going to never want to see another 'e' ever again.

I've come up with a few good strong logos, and although personally I would've gone down a different route to the one Steve actually chose out of the ones given to him, I'm pretty happy with the logo I am working with anyway. I think it has all the attributes of a good logo; it fills the space will, there is some real contrast to it, also quite a recognisable shape.. clear brand identity not getting it mixed up with anything else, and also it works at a variety of sizes. It'll be good to see how this logo fits in with my final project of the CD cover, and if I'm going to have to try mirror the style on there or if it'll just all come into place without needing to tweak. I'm hoping the latter, as I think there is a very distinct style to my work in these situations and all kind've follow a similar path from my way of thinking. Really going for a futuristic effect but still being able to be used in the mainstream and recognised, which will give me that vital brand recognition.

This week is the week to start on the CD cover, now I've got some finalisation from Steve on my logo, I can press ahead with the next task. I've already started doing more precise mood boards to convey my feelings around the type of music and how it will be represented on the CD cover its self. Started jotting ideas down, for images on the cover, graphical features I can put in and how everything will be manipulated for the benefit of the aesthetics. I also need to start thinking about what is going to go on the CD its self, really trying to keep a simplistic feel throughout the job, so this shouldn't be such a long task, I just need to get some real solid ideas down on paper and start developing them into great designs, good enough to compete with professional. As this is the aim of this task, hoping that the cover/cd you have designed, can be put in HMV and not look out of place on the shelves.

I have to say I'm pretty confident I can make it to this professional level, I know the design skills, eye are there it's all a matter of the creative side and hoping that the work I come up with will be some of my best. I know throughout this task I'm going to keep striving for better and better, since we've been given so much time to do this. Hopefully the work will actually match my abilty.

Since the talk to John on Monday and the speaker that came in, I'm going to start going out there and looking at jobs; what design companys want from a designer, what skills..etc and also other educational establishments, to see how this compares to what I'm doing at the moment. Then I will be able to see what my rivals and competitors are being taught whilst I'm here, hopefully knowing all this, when it finally comes time to go for a real job I'll have the necessary skills, attitude and foot in the door with my portfolio to be successful. This past year has gone so quick, I can tell the next one will go even quicker; hopefully all this will make me ready for leaving the course and getting out into the big world. As a safety there's other courses at other places, I can use to top up my skills and really persue excellence before going for a job.. the decision will come at the end of the two years, which one my choice will be.

Emitting Pleasure.

When first greeted with the A7 assignment I was really pleased, reading all the tasks we would get to do in the next few weeks; pure design. This is exactly how I thought the majority of the course would be when initially signing up. I'm really starting to come into my element here, I can see the designs flowing through my head, already with strong logo and cd cover ideas. The music it's self is so inspirational, and theres so much to use whether it's just the record label name being 'emit' or plays on the type of music they sell being really electronical. I'm taking influences from sci-fi, website design company's like Shadowness and The Design Republic.

With the first few logo's already done I can really see how they are gonna develop into the final product, I've got visions of expanding light shooting around; galaxies swirling, deep see creatures floating and glowing. I'm also really looking at simplistic ideas, especially when it comes to the CD cover.