Fatboy Slim Covers

The Fatboy Slim covers normally have some kind of humour involved with them, because some of them are just brilliant designs - I will steer clear from trying to emulate this theme and cartoon style.

Layout and Type

This has quite a sinister feel to it, the hand drawn type which is dark brown on a black background creates an eerie feel to it. Nicely presented though, clear and communicates the message well.

A show for typographers and those kind of type people. It has that old fashioned, magicians show feel to it, with the swirly type and illustrated corners - the words "Roll Up! Roll up!" seem to come to mind. Beautifully presented though, not too over the top for the front, but just enough fuss to make you think 'ooh whats that!', which is exactly what I did.

More Type and Layout

A slightly more corporate example than I have posted previously:

Branding can have just as nice type and layout, like this example, simple, the letters are spaced nicely and the blue is a bright eye catching contrast to the black.

Word Boner

A few images from wordboner.com, simple in design but effective in communication. This is the kind of type that interests me, it's fun, it's witty and it makes me smile!

Looking at Type and Layout

It's been a while since I have looked at pure type! So to help me get inspired for this Bloc+Blur brief I will be looking at type and layout pieces.

This one is brilliant, I found it on Google Images but it linked me to a previous LCA BAGD students blog, its by someone from Amsterdam called Toko I believe:

Simplicity at its finest, a plain sans serif font which looks like Helvetica, pure white type on a black background, but with the type shifted vertically. Genius.

Album Cover Composition Research

I have plenty of albums, but I must say I didn't have the first idea of designing an album cover - even as a student of Graphic Design I just think 'ooh pretty' or 'ah, crap'. So I really need to look into the composition of them...

This is really cool, and typical of covers from this genre - it almost recreates the club vibe of the dark clubs with the bright lights. The lights almost draw you in, very eye catching when on the shelf. The text is very simple, just on three lines - readable, and in 2 different but very similar fonts.

Again, quite typical of the trance/dance genre covers, recreating that club vibe. The colours work really well here, it makes the silhouette stand out which directs straight up to the title. The same font has been used here but altered slightly so there are two different visuals, however, they still fit together well.

This is a very different layout to the ones previously, there is no image here, just a solid black background which makes the text stand out. However, I do not feel as drawn or motivated by this.

Cool design, but the line drawing of the Hospital logo in the background is barely visible with the bold white type. Maybe if it was smaller it would look different and/or better.

Very simple but sophisticated design. The text really stands out, and the image looks really interesting. The colours give it that nightclub vibe, without having to use the obvious imagery as seen previously.

This is a different composition from all the others, the use of different layers gives a feeling of depth, again the bright colours against a black/dark background give the feeling of being in a club.

The text looks rather odd, and cheap but this is purely to look at different compositions, not whether I like it or not. There are quite a few lines of text in the corner which seems rather cluttered, different fonts and sizes have been used which seems to over complicate it to me. 

Extremely simple, not a lot to say in terms of composition.

Uses the artist name, title and photo but still maintains simplicity - especially with the black and white photo which gives it a classic look, ideal for Greatest Hits really.

The use of desaturated images like this one, makes the whole piece easier to navigate around. The whitest area on the picture is the text which draws us in, ideal to stand out on the shelf.

FatBoy Slim

It's time to react. I have just decided I do want to have a go at the Fat Boy Slim brief:

I have no ideas for this, not even a squiggle. I am unsure when the deadline is as it wasn't mentioned in the e-mail. I will probably need to update this brief later, I just wanted to get it straight on my blog and start thinking. 

How can you redesign a cover that's already really cool? Here goes nothing...

Ooh and the album cover below was designed by Red Design in Brighton, they have produced some stunning work, might drop them an email...

The USA version, apparently the one above is offensive...!

Brief 6: Bloc + Blur

This brief sounds quite cool, restricting but at the same time interesting as I like experimenting with layouts.

With the brief being quite restricted there is no need for me to research specifically into fonts and colours, however I will be looking at layouts.

Idezine Floral Patterns

Taken from:
http://indeziner.com/design/35-glamorous-floral-patterns-for-designers/

These are floral patterns, not notebooks, but still relevant to my context of the brief. The designs vary in colour schemes, and styles:

The two above are completely different in style from one another, but they would still make good notebook patterns, but for two completely different audiences. I prefer the top one as it is much more brighter and vibrant, I pick a notebook because of an exciting cover to mask the sometimes boring contents.

Again, completely different, the top is bright and very repetitive, where the lower one has a similar shape - the pointed flower, but much more neutral colours, and reminds me a little of wallpaper.

The top image is interesting, as the centre line of the flower runs across the entire page, this is a simple line drawing done well. The bottom one is very precise too, but with the use of the squarish shapes and the very straight lines it seems more geometric. The colours used work well.

These two patterns are much more complex because of the branching leaves and swirls, I love the colours in the lower image as it looks like a light is shining on the centre.

I like the overlapping individual flowers, as it seems more spontaneous, but it is still a pattern.

This is a different way of creating a flower, although it does remind me more of snowflakes, especially with the colour scheme.

Again, another pattern of overlapping individual shapes. The colours are not ones I would use but they do work.

Very simple design but the pattern is harder to figure out.

Ryman

Some notebooks from Ryman Stationary:

- An extremely cool Where's Wally notebook, its not flowers or pattern really, but I just liked it!

 - This wouldn't be my preference of notebook but it just shows the simplicity that the designs can be.

- This is a really cool but different notebook cover, I like the arrangement of black squares between the different colours which are organised in some kind of spectrum.

- This is an illustrative colourful cover, I like how the flower appears to be detailed but close up it is actually quite simple. The inside pages are quite decorative too, which probably explains why this is £9.99.

Guitar Soundholes

For one of my ideas I want to make the skulls eyes, guitar soundholes. Here are some examples I have been looking at...

This one happens to be a Mexican Classical Guitar:

The detail for some of these are really intricate, especially the one below...