Directed Study - Album cover design

This week we looked at colour and image in order to create the front and back of a CD cover. I chose to do The Weeknd because he is one of my favourite artists. I really liked the original cover, the use of the black and white image with a turquoise/green colour scale. I chose this specific image using flickr because it reflects the artist and the songs relate to the image. I didn't use an image of the artist because I was unable to source one that would be effective, I thought black and white would be more effective than colour in order for the title and the colours of green to stand out. I tried to use a font for the title that was similar of the original, I used Arial black and made the text bold, I decided to use a shadow behind the title because I thought it gave the cover some depth and I thought the 3D looked more interesting and eye-catching. I decided to use the same colour scale from the original cover because I thought it stood out and I didn't want to change the cover entirely. The original cover featured lines underneath the title and the colour scale, I chose to use two lines underneath the colour scale and have them connected at one end but different lengths at the other end, I thought this was more creative rather than only having two lines, I thought it made the cover look more intriguing, I decided to do the same underneath the title of the album but reversed just to change the dynamics slightly. I was unable to find the exact font for the album title so I decided to recreate it using Herculanum font and then I used the line tool to add in the extra lines to recreate the original title. I am really happy with this design, I think I have been really creative but have still used some elements of the original album cover. 

I also created the back of the album cover, I again wanted to use a black and white image to fit in with the front cover and to make the text stand out, I decided to change the transparency so it didn't clash with the black text. This image is quite similar to the other image used to fit with the theme of the album and artist. I chose to use the same font Herculanum but instead used bold just to be slightly different, I thought this font worked nicely with the image. Instead of using an image I decided to recreate my own 'Explicit Content' sticker to try and be creative, I was unable to find the exact fonts but found some that were relatively similar and changed the shape of them to try and make them more like the originals. Overall creating both a front and back cover has been enjoyable and I am very happy with what I have created.