Fonts for album cover and ideas for title

Old Sans Black. This is the font I chose. It is legible and appropriate and works nicely with my design(s).

Sketches for album cover/inside panels

Idea Number 1:

This is a sketch for an idea for the cover of my album. It is a photograph of my artist, alone. He will be positioned in the centre of the frame so that his head is in the centre of the image leaving some empty space above. I think this will not only draw the viewer’s eye directly to the artist’s face, but increase the sense of emotion that is appealing to the audience of the acoustic/alternative genre.

The shot will be fairly close-up, revealing only his head and shoulders. The artist will be looking downward, but not so much that he looks sad or depressed, just so that he isn’t looking directly at the camera keeping his thoughts/emotions slightly ambiguous.

The photo will be in black & white as this fits with the style of the acoustic/alternative genre.

The lighting will be chiaroscuro and very dramatic. A very strong light will be shone on the left side of his face, leaving the rest of the image almost entirely shadowed. This will make the cover of the album a very dramatic, eye-catching statement yet tie nicely with the genre of the music. 

 Inspiration for this idea came from album covers such as "The Essential" and "Various Positions" by Leonard Cohen. They are close up images of the artist himself using extreme lighting, chiaroscuro and high levels of contrast.

This album cover shows the artist, Leonard Cohen, with the same composition as my idea. The image only reveals his head and shoulders, with his head central to the frame. The face covers the vanishing point with draws the eye directly to it. However in this image the artist is looking directly into the camera, and the background is not plain. This successfully creates a statement for the artist that suits the thoughts and feelings of both the artist and the audience and therefore appeals to them.

Idea Number 2:

This is a new idea for the inside pages of my digipak. It involves a panoramic style photograph of the artist sitting on a wall overlooking the city centre. It would stretch over 3 or 4 panels of the digipak.
The location was part of the music video I created, although in the video the singer wasn't sitting alone, and in the photo he would be. He would sit facing either away from the camera and looking over the city, or towards the camera with his back to the city. With him facing away from the camera, it is like he is looking at the city, which intensifies the sense of loneliness. With him facing towards the camera, it is as if he has turned his back on the city, and turned his back on the memory of him and the girl, which adds to the ambiguity of the music video. Although, without having yet taken the image it is difficult to judge which way creates the greatest artistic statement.

These are shots from the video footage of the wall, the cityscape, and the couple overlooking it. 

Idea number 3: 

This idea has the artist sitting by the window with his guitar on his knee, a shot similar to those used in my music video. Using the rule of thirds, the artist is to the right of the frame. He is again looking slightly downward, though still his apparent emotion is ambiguous rather than sad. 

This is the final photo of this design: 

I've photoshopped the image to make the lighting more contrasted, and changed the image to black and white. 

Album artwork experiments

Here are some experiments with photographs of my "artist" that I could use as album artwork:

I took these photos in an area that I used within my music video. I found the location picturesque, with the fallen autumn leaves and the trees growing in unusual shapes in front of the empty field.
I decided to try a "vintage" effect on the photographs. I did this by blending a mix of blurs, yellow layers and blue layers, as well as brightening the image. I like the effect of the vintage style, as it works well with the genre. Although, I will try reducing the contrast levels to reduce the vibrancy of the colours a little...

These are copies of the photos with reduced contrast. 

This is another image I could use for my album artwork. The subject's face is extremely emotive, which is reinforced by the highly contrasted lighting, bright whites and deep blacks. 

This is a cropped version of the image above. It makes a close up image of the subject's face, like the close up used in other album covers, for instance Ed Sheeran's album: 

I also added a fade to the edges of the image to further make the face the subject of the image. 

Other artists' album covers

Below are some album covers for other singer/songwriter artists.

After researching album covers by various singer songwriters, all of the covers I found were photography based. This is a very generic signifier of my artist's genre of acoustic, singer songwriter.
This is because the use of photography with this genre reinforces the expression of emotion that is representative of the genre, often presented within the lyrics.
The photography itself is usually emotive in the way that lighting is strong, highly contrasted, very bright lights and deep darks.
The colour is usually altered, sometimes black and white (Crosby Loggins, Time To Move) or reduced saturation to make the colour of the image weaker (Matthew McMahon, Too Big To Fail; James Morrison, Undiscovered).
The composition of image is fairly simple, following the rule of thirds considering direction of strong lines (Crosby Loggins with the path and fence creating a vanishing point, James Morrison Song For You, Truths For Me with the kerb disecting the image diagonally) and position of subjects (Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson with the positions of the two singers, Matthew McMahon with the singer positioned more to the bottom third of the image).
Something that occurs across all the album artworks is that the artist/band is always pictured. This is an important factor for my artist's genre, as this makes the album more personal, which is representative of the genre.

In my album artwork, I'll aim to incorporate these points into the designs. I'll use photography of the artist and subjects relative to the song, for instance a cityscape photograph. I'll compose the image using the rule of thirds and keep the image simple yet reinforcing of the emotions of the song, and I'll adjust the colour to suit both the genre and the image.

Discuss how one or more groups of people are represented through the media.

Discuss how one or more groups of people are represented through the media

When looking at society today, it is clear to see that there are many groups within society, and indeed many groups within those groups. The theories written by Michel Maffesoli in his book “The Time of the Tribes” identify and describe this: society is fragmented into many groups, which are then further fragmented into tribes. The tribes are for ever changing, never static. The media can be shown to represent different groups in different ways. One group in particular, British youth, is heavily represented by media, often in a very negative way.

The TV series White Girl is a story following a young girl named Leah, whose family escape the grasp of her abusive father, and end up living in a small Muslim community. Following the struggles Leah experiences concerning her parents and poverty, the audience watches her strive to break free of the identity she has, and find a new identity within the community she now lives. The result of this is her becoming Muslim.  

This TV series represents youth in a refreshingly positive way, in the way that Leah’s behaviours and attitudes developed and changed as she developed a post-modern identity, which contrasted greatly to the behaviours and attitudes she’d adopted with a modernist identity pressed onto her by family, community and religion, seen at the beginning of the series.

The series shows a youth that is heavily influenced by post-modernist identities and results in the identity shifting and changing to fit the narratives of the individual. This is suggested in the theories of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who suggested that the narratives of an individual are always changing, and it is down to these stories and narratives that our identity forms.

Another media text that is representative of British youth is the film This Is England. In this film, the main character is a young boy named Sean who lost his father and lives with very little money, resulting in him becoming unhappy in his own lifestyle. Sean finds friendship in a group of ‘mods’ from which he copies their behaviours, attitudes, fashion, and appearance. Sean does whatever he can to become one of the gang, which proves difficult with his lack of money and his mother’s strict disagreement. The audience watch as Sean changes his entire identity, from the modernist identity forced upon him by his mother, to the mod identity of the gang to which he aspires.

This Is England represents youth mostly as the group of mods, that being yobbish and antisocial, with disregards for authorities as laws are disobeyed and Sean completely defies his mother. This can be described as Sean trying to break free from a modernist identity, controlled by his mother, society and what they expect of him. Sean desires a change of identity, which, as he does so, upsets his mother and represents him and British youth as a whole as rebellious and uncaring. As the audience identifies with Sean, the film represents British youth as misrepresented. This Is England supports the ideas of the theorists Paul Ricoeur and Anthony Giddens that the identity is never static, it changes with the narratives of the individual in order to suit them.

A final media text that represents British youth is About A Girl, a short film about a young white girl in a run-down area of Manchester. Her monologue describes her life in a light-hearted manor despite the depressing situations she experiences, for instance poverty, domestic abuse and family troubles. The film shows her loss of identity as her family is broken down, due to the absence of her father and the poverty her family experiences. She is clearly a very troubled child, dreaming of being a famous pop star like Britney Spears.

In this short film, youth are represented as disconnected and out of control. Youth seem to have completely distorted views and morals. Leah has lost her sense of identity, which is influenced heavily by her community and her family, who seem to have disregarded her welfare.

All three media texts represent youth similarly. The main character in both This Is England and White Girl experience a search for their new identity and a resulting change in their identity. In both texts, this is caused by their broken families and being neglected by society. About A Girl also outlines the influence that broken families and being neglected by society has on British youth, but doesn’t represent youth as searching for a post-modern identity, rather represents a youth that has lost touch with the reality of their identity and as a result forms a lost and damaged identity. The link between all three media texts is that they represent a youth of rebellion and disconnection in some form, whether it be rebelling against their parents and the modernist identity pushed upon them or rebelling against morals, whose personal identities are developed due to their narratives and stories.