… and I’ve been studying the aesthetic  of music album covers.

Despite the reduction in the number of compositions, I will still be working on six, simply because I didn’t want to have to sit  down and re-think my concept again. This week was insane so I didn’t manage to progress much and mainly focused on breaking down the elements in the album artworks (type, style, colors etc.) into “ingredients” I can pick from to convey how these songs represent me when I piece everything together over Chinese New Year week.

Something that was brought up during consults was whether or not I will be introducing the music and the original album artworks during presentation: I figured that I wouldn’t. Then I realized I’ve already revealed everything on my OSS already. So in this update, I’ll try to limit the number of graphics I’m uploading (also since they’re mainly notes for myself and we’ll definitely be doing another OSS update after the presentation anyway).

So below are quick summaries of some of my notes that I’ve made after researching the aesthetics of the respective artists’ album artworks along with some ideas I might be incorporating into the project:

REDs

• My name is Lewin and I keep you away from the Down Side of Me.
  • The album art for all the releases before Every Open Eye were all fairly consistent and focused on shapes and had very strong usage of colors.
  • The “pixelization” effect over the image of flowers seems like a fun idea I could play around with since the song is about hiding one’s weaknesses.
  • Font: The font used for CHRVCHES’ logo is coincidentally quite similar to the one I did for my “Hello my name is” tags (which I made a few years ago) so I will probably readapt that again.

• My name is Lewin and this time baby I’ll be Bulletproof.
  • Alexander Brown has been consistently contributing to all her album artwork.
  • Futuristic art deco vibes. There’s always a consistent retro yet contrasting futuristic feeling to the artwork.
  • Earlier releases like the artwork the In for the Kill and Bulletproof singles gives off a noir feel as well.
  • “Airbrush”y graphics; a style I can adapt.
  • ITC Serif Gothic and custom fonts designed by Alexander Brown were used for the text.

B&Ws

• My name is Lewin and girl you and I will die Unbelievers bound to the tracks of the train.
  • Bold serif white text in caps over a photograph.
  • Photograph usually looks slightly dated, filtered or grungy.
  • 3 albums follow this style: Vampire Weekend (ceiling chandelier), Contra (Photo of a girl complete with a lawsuit being filed over it) and Modern Vampires of the City (Literal photo of a city)
  • Although this song is part of my B&W set, I might consider giving it hints of other colors, we’ll see how that goes…

• My name is Lewin and I’ll make you a Mixtape that’s a blueprint of my soul.
  • The choice in typeface is pretty similar to Vampire Weekend’s except that Jamie Cullum’s seem to take a 3D approach; and in his later album, made it look like stage lighting text.
  • Since the song references blueprints and there’s an exploding piano on the cover, I want to try adapting those ideas to create like an exploding view of the inner parts to something. Not sure how that would sync with with typeface though.

BLUEs

• My name is Lewin and baby love me ’cause I’m playing on the Radio.
  • Retro LA/American 70s (?) vibe.
  • Focuses a lot on portraiture.
  • The background environment often relates more to the song than Lana Del Rey in the album artwork. In that vein of the environment being more telling than the subject itself, it’s kind of similar to Vampire Weekend’s covers.
  • The narrow font is always in capitals and spans the length of the image.

• My name is Lewin and if I could begin to be, half of what you think of me, I could do about anything, I could even Love Like You.
  • The font itself is very round and bubbly. Kind of like Dunkin’ Donuts.
  • Also, the body of the text itself is usually colored in such a way that it looks like the letters are half filled with water.
  • Ties in nicely with how the song is often played against the background of the sea in the ending credits and episode title cards.
  • Reflections against water might be a fun idea to play around with since the song is essentially about self-reflection.