Creating a design for the 2015 Secret 7

We have been asked to look last years Secret 7 tracks and design a recored cover in responce to one of the tracks. I chose to look at 'The Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers' as I am a fan of the band and their music and the title itselft is extremely evoking and engaging.

This task is very breif and was to be finished within a couple of hours. I began by creating some sketched design ideas relating to title taking the words 'Dead Flowers' very litally and seeing how I could express this within my sketches.

This first design on the left shows a vase of flowers that apear to be bleeding, realting to this idea of a 'Dead Flower' I wanted to keep my designs very minimal and simplictic this would emphisis the content and the messgae it is trying to convay. The right hand side image shows a more basic design of a rose made of ash large in the middle of the page.

 This design on the right again shows the bleeding flowers but within a different composition that I personally feel is more dynamic and engaging. The right hand side design shows a vase with the flowers petals in motion dropping off.

 I have designed this piece of the right showing a number of flowers spread systematically across the record sleave and each flower with less and less petals and it moves diagonally across the page. I also created this design on the right for Underworld track 'Born Slippy' as I felt it would be a more comical lital aproch to the designs.

The left hand image again shows this 'Born Slippy' idea but in a more finalised form. I also recreated the bleeding flowers idea but on a diagonal table with the blood streaking down.

The drawing on the left shows a more detailed and finalised version of my previous idea, showing a larger number of flowers in a more organised columns. The drawing on the right shows a leaf with the petals falling captured in motion.









These two drawings show how I have experimented with compositions of pervious ideas to give other perspectives and experiment with what works well within the square space.

These are the two designs drawn in illustrator, as the was a quick task I could only created fairly ruff mock ups but the ideas on show are clear. Looking at the designs alongside the drawings I felt that if I was to go any further in this album cover design that it would be more appropriate to use a more tactile design technique as creating vector images can look extremely stark and dull. Looking at designing last years first has helped me see how creating a too literal album cover can in some cases work and be appropriate but often the more abstract and conceptual designs can be much more alluring.

S722 // The Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be
S723 // Diana Ross & The Supremes - Reflections
S724 // The Maccabees - Go
S725 // Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
S726 // The Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers
S727 // St Vincent - Digital Witness
S728 // Underworld - Born Slippy (Nuxx) - See more at: http://secret-7.com/history#sthash.YqexEzVV.dpuf