Inspiration from album covers

I thought it would be useful to look at some of the creatives that came up with the artwork for some of the bands on Fiction Records.

I first looked at Crystal Castles' albums. Their albums are often photography more than artwork/design based. The album cover for III was by Samuel Aranda, a photojournalist. This shows that photographers also have their work used as album covers, not just illustrators and graphic designers.

In contrast to this, Kaiser Chiefs often use illustrators and designers for their album covers. I particularly like the album cover for their latest release "Stay Together" as it ties in with my other research - show by bold, bright colours and funky shapes and patterns. It was created by Salvador Design who also helped create some music videos with the band.

Image result for Kaiser Chiefs Stay Together album artwork

I also looked at Tame Impala's album "Currents". The album art and its accompanying singles were by Robert Beatty. Kevin Parker has said ''Currents'' designs are based on a diagram of vortex shedding he remembered while trying to visualise the album's themes. Beatty described how Parker's ideas for the album artwork "were all based on turbulent flow, the way liquid or air flows around objects. I particularly like the abstract feel of this album cover.

Looking at some album covers, as well as music video, film, animation and posters/advertisements have inspired me with my own outcomes. This is because I am using bold colours, shapes and also intend on playing around with using these components with some animation.

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History of Fiction Records

This year is Fiction Records' 40th anniversary. Fiction Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Parry and owned by Universal Music Group. Chris Parry is the co-founder of Radio X and the manager of The Cure, and with the help of music publisher Fiction Songs Ltd they founded Fiction Records together in 1978. Both were based in London and also maintained a satellite office in New York. The label is best known for being the home of 'The Cure' for over 20 years. Fiction Records achieved 'The Cure's' first No. 1 album in 1992 with 'Wish'. The song 'Friday I'm in Love' from the album also topped Billboards Modern Rock chart. Fiction was also the home to other artists and released many acclaimed albums, such as 'Eat's 'Sell Me a God' in 1989 and 'Die Warzau's 'Engine' in 1995. Other artists during this time were from the likes of 'The Passions', 'Cult Hero', and ...

Inspiration from posters and advertisements

I decided to look at some music posters to get some ideas of how music is advertised and for some artistic inspiration. I noticed a lot of music posters have bold colours, shapes and font and want to explore this in my own work. I also noticed the aesthetic of many music posters go with the genre of music. I plan on doing some illustrations of musical instruments with bold colours and shapes inspired by these posters. While researching music posters I came across the work of Craig Frazier . He has been an illustrator and designer since 1978. “I like to think that one of the explanations for Craig Frazier’s expressive and memorable illustrations is that he has been—and still is—a designer. The search for a concept—and not putting anything down until a concept is found —is what makes the end product great work that communicates, often about difficult subjects.” - —Ivan Chermayeff, partner, Chermayeff & Geismar I like his illustrations and the simplici...

Collaboration

We have decided to run with the idea of celebrating the 40 years of Fiction Records in a narrative response featuring all the bands they've worked with in different eras and taking inspiration from how their design and aesthetic has developed and changed over the years. Collaboration in the creative industry is extremely important as some artists/creatives may need some work created for them that they don’t have the skills to do themselves. For example, a musician would like help when creating their music videos and tour videos. So their label would also have a say in this. But a musician would also need an illustrator/graphic designer/photographer to design their album artworks, tour posters, logos etc. They might have multiple creatives doing different things therefore they’d have to collaborate and get rights so they can all create work together. In this project I collaborated with my group by trying out animation doodles over film and video that the filmmaker came up wi...

Fiction records | Unit X

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