CD Cover Art Challenge

[Mathias]

Hi all,

While listening to Dio this evening and thinking about the cover art for their various CDs I thought that it would be fun to actually design album cover art for a band and thought I may as well extend this idea as a challenge to anyone who may be interested.

I haven't set up a challenge before, so I may be doing this completely wrong, but I will do my best!

Final product

1x Fully rendered jewel case album cover OF A BAND YOU LOVE/LIKE (example above)
Dimensions: 12 cm x 12 cm or 4.75 inches x 4.75 inches

Studies, sketches, thumbnails - include these if possible to explain and emphasize your process

Optional: 1x Sketced out jewel case album cover FOR A BAND YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH (I suggest not following all of the below tips and not doing too much background research to see the difference in your design choices between something known and loved and something you are unfamiliar with)

Deadline
While I don't want to enforce a deadline on this as I think it's a great addition to anyone's portfolio of work, I will add one!

I will be picking 'the best' out of all of the entries. If you want to be considered for this your deadline is:

Wednesday 9 January 2013

If you find this post after the deadline I invite you to have a go at it anyway. You may just learn something!

How your work will be judged
This is the first time that I will be 'officially' judging anything like this, but trust me when I say that I will be taking many things into consideration.

I will be taking a look at how relevant your submission is compared to the band it's representing. The (square!) composition of the image and how well it flows. How well the image catches the eye and maintains interest and lastly I will take the effort you made into account as well.

I am afraid I don't have a livestream so I can't offer you guys a live crit or anything like that, but I will poke around and see if I can't figure something out that may make this a little more interesting competitively! If you need help, feel free to shoot me a message and I will do the best I can.

How to submit your work
Please simply link or display your work in this thread. This includes studies, sketches, thumbnails etc. (references are fine too if necessary but please don't overdo it!) Go ahead and include links to the music of the bands as well as it will help people understand your work quicker.

Tips

These are just things to consider and are completely optional. If you get stuck though I suggest having a read as they may inspire some ideas within you.

• Square composition - if you look at the dimensions I gave above you'll notice it's a square! Most people, especially us artists, tend to avoid squares because they aren't overly used these days (though things like Instagram are changing that). Don't be afraid though, use this as an opportunity to learn to utilize composition in a different way. I'm sure you can find lots of information on square composition online, here's a link you can start with.
  
• Who are they - do some legwork and research the band. Get to know them, their likes, dislikes, their story, where they play etc.
  
• What music do they play - figure our the genre of music they play and see if there's some requiring themes or symbolism within the genre that you could build upon e.g. country music and family life, rappers and guns etc.
  
• What are their influences - does the band have any other bands that inspired them or maybe just other people, events, culture? Can you learn anything from those sources inspiration that might give you more ideas or a clearer vision?
  
• Who are their fans - These are the people that would ultimately BUY the CD. While you have to make sure you anchor everything within the right boundaries, you HAVE to make sure you're creating something that will catch the attention of the fans or potential fans and make them look just long enough to peek their interest and buy the CD. Who are they? What's their age group? Gender? Interests? Likes? Dislikes? If you're a fan yourself take an inward look at yourself in relation to the band? Maybe you know someone who is, ask them.
  
• Look at references - Album cover art is as undefined as music itself, but there are still themes and trends out there. Look at new album art, compare it to old. Look at album art within the genre. Get an idea of just how much is out there and use it to inspire and ground your own.
  
• Listen to the band - this goes without saying, but I still will! Listen to the band. Their music, their vocals, their subject matters, their rhythm. If you want, listen to them while you are working on the album cover to put you you in the right mindset.
  
• Look at their current album covers - what have they done previously? Are there recurring themes or subject matters behind their albums? Do they follow a certain predefined theme? If so, do you want to continue that theme or stray away from it? Do they use certain colours? Lines? Graphics? Do they have a set style already? Do they use a specific font or logo? Where is the text placed? You will learn a lot doing this.
  
• Talk to their fans if possible - do you know anyone who is a fan? If so, it may be worth checking some of your ideas with them.
  
• Are you alienating anyone - while it's good to figure out who you are selling to and who you are selling for, you also want to make sure you also want to make sure you aren't excluding large groups of people by using imagery they wouldn't understand unless they were die-hard fans of the band. Think of it as an inside joke, everyone joins in and finds it funny except for the people on the outside. While they can be ignored at times, just make sure you aren't excluding a large group of people unnecessarily. Unless the band caters to an already niche (small and specific) market in which case it's up to you.
  
• Remember the final product - the final product would be sat amongst hundreds sometimes thousands of other competitors, because of this you need to make sure yours stands out in a crowd and doesn't simply blend in and get lost or overlooked. I am not saying paint it garishly yellow and adding flashing LED lights to desperately grab the attention of the viewer, but to just keep in mind it has to stand out somehow. How, is it up to you. All the other metal bands have gothic and fantasy inspired imagery on their albums? Put a pretty flower on yours that at first glance appears innocent but upon further inspection is sucking out the eye fluids of its enemy.
  
• What message do you want to get across - do you want to get a message across at all? If in doubt with what to do figuring out a message or story to your image is always a good way to make it feel more interesting and relevant. A message can mean so many different things from a pop band saying 'we support the soldiers' to an aging rock band saying 'we've still got it!'
  

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help.

With the end of that wall of text, let's get started!

-Mathias