OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - Final Design Submission Boards

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - brief and duration time

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN 
Duration: 8 working days 
Sarah Heal 
Module Code: OUGD603 
Module Title:  Extended Practice 

BRIEF TITLE: 'Design for Paloma Faith' - Talenthouse 

Brief: 
Artists, designers and illustrators from around the world were invited by Paloma Faith to design their own interpretation of her Platinum certified 3rd album, ‘A Perfect Contradiction’. 

Background: 
The already platinum ‘A Perfect Contradiction’ marks a change in sound for three time BRIT nominee Paloma Faith. She said: “Its tone is the very opposite of what the last album was. There are a couple of melancholy moments, sure, but it’s much more a ‘if it’s all gone to shit, fuck it, let’s have a dance’ kind of record." Paloma wrote a lot of the album whilst living in New York last year, and completed the recording process between there, Miami, LA and London. As well as the older sounds she has always adored, Paloma channelled Eryka Badu and Jill Scott, The Fugees and N.E.R.D. One of the benchmarks for the album was Candi Staton’s classic ‘Young Hearts Run Free’: a song in which the lyrics speak of sadness, but the delivery leaves you feeling absolutely empowered: “I’ve been reflecting on things that have been tough, but I’m almost celebrating that. If you haven’t been to the bottom, you wouldn’t be able to recognise how it feels to feel really amazing, after all.” 

Considerations: 
Use the current artwork of her album (originally designed and photographed by David Standish), music and general persona for inspiration. 

Final Outcomes: 
There were no limitations on medium, however the design was to be turned into a limited edition poster. 

Target Audience: 
Paloma and her team of judges, including Rankin and Michael Stephens of Liberty London, will select one artist to receive a portfolio meeting with a Sony Music Creative, exposure for their artwork as her official social skins for a week and $1,300. Paloma’s fans are also the target audience.  

Tone of Voice: 
Abstract, surreal and dramatic 

Deliverables: 
Artists should retain their original artwork files (in 300dpi) but designs must be submitted in JPEG or PNG, max size 5MB 
Submit By: October 16, 2014 at 8:00 AM 
Poster must be 200 x 300 mm 

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - EVALUATION

This brief to me, helped me learn a lot more about Adobe Photoshop. I am so used to working with vectors and flat design, that I challenged myself to a more commercial, skeumorphic aesthetic. I started with vectors in Adobe Illustrator then exported them to Photoshop. I used my own images for the textures such as the clouds, and had a lot of fun figuring out how to make Crepuscular rays digitally. Although this isn’t a complicated or extensive piece, I think that it’s quite strong in it’s aesthetics which display a variation to my normal routine of flat design and vectors. I didn’t win the competition as I quickly discovered that they were after something a lot more ‘arty’ and not so commercial, which is ironic but I’m not too disappointed as I’m sticking this piece in my portfolio anyway. In the future, if I’m entering a competition I won’t be sticking to something so basic and will make the effort to branch out, as that’s what they are usually looking for. If I were to do this piece again, I would introduce different mediums and not just stick to being purely digitally produced.

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - Final Submission Piece

This is my final submission for the Design for Paloma Faith contest on Talenthouse. 

Since the last update, I knocked back the cloud design even more by adding filters and adding blurs and lowering opacity. I also added a lens blur.

The problems I forsee with this submission and why I fear I may not win the competition is that the design might be far too corporate and perhaps far too similar to her current design work for this tour/ album when the intention was to make it all match and look professional. However, aside from that I am very happy with my ending design and wish the best of luck to everyone participating in the competition!

Here is my description to accompany my design:

Una Contraddizione Perfetta

I really hope that I have captured the character and style of Paloma Faith in this piece I have created. I found the cover photo of her latest album, 'A Perfect Contradiction' to be heavily inspired - almost parodying - a Renaissance painting, 'The Entombment of Christ' by Caravaggio but with a Paloma Faith twist. This lead me to be inspired by Baroque / Renaissance architecture and thus creating Paloma's very own 'di sotto in su' illusionistic ceiling design. The extreme contrasts between bright and dark are no coincidence - this is to represent the extreme contrasts of emotions portrayed in her music. I imagine this to be the ceiling of the room on the cover design! I adorned it with the 5 elements of the characters in her album; (from left to right, top to bottom) The Surgeon, The Lover, The Chauffeur, The Stable Boy and The Leader - inspired by the 5 chapters of her website. I also added a detail that only the upon closer inspection of the album cover you may find, 'B734'...I would like to thank Talenthouse, SONY and of course Paloma Faith for giving me this wonderful opportunity to design for my favourite artist! It's been great fun!

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - Development

After researching 'A Perfect Contradiction' album and it's artwork, I decided to create a faux baroque/ renaissance style ceiling in red stained 'wood' - as if it were the ceiling of the room on the album cover.

To continue the Biblical theme (after finding that the cover photo is a recreation of Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ) I decided that the ceiling should have an illusionistic style, meaning that the ceiling would look 3d to the viewer below with scenes of 'heaven' being above not constrained to the different segments of the design.

After looking at the 5 elements on her website I decided to make a design that could feature these 5 different symbols. I chose the four corners of the page and another space at the top for the final icon, with a symmetrical space at the bottom for the hotel room number as seen on the cover.

Here is the initial sketch I worked from: 

As you can see in each of the four corners and at the top middle bear the 5 different symbols from the website. This will help tie in the design with her other graphic work and make it function as a set.

I started to digitise each of the segments of the design.

To make it look 3d/ realistic/ photographic would require a lot of gradients and then to be imported into Photoshop from Illustrator for further editing.

Detail of more refined gradient work. I decided to have gradients on the outer lines as well to give it the panelled effect.

The poster so far. I carried on tweaking with the different shapes and added recreations of the symbols from the site into each of the corners.

Here, now in Photoshop you can see me editing images of clouds (from my personal holiday album) by 'cutting out' the sky and adding different golden shades to make it look more 'Biblical'. The colour palette was taken directly from the album cover to make sure the reds were just right.

Here I am creating a circular gradient to be used for the 'ceu escuro' / sunbursts through the clouds.

The poster so far... I decided to add two more circles as the design was looking a little empty at the top and bottom of the design.

Here I am adjusting the clouds for within the ceiling 'window' of the design.

And making them darker - they are a background after all.

This cloud here shall be in the foreground and so needs to be a lot brighter. I wanted it to be seeping/ escaping from the ceiling window, as seen in many typical Baroque illusionistic ceiling designs.

I added a more golden tinted effect.

I added another, thinner cloud to the other side to balance out the design.

Here I am re-using the first foreground cloud image in a different way - I need to abridge the gap between foreground and background by populating the window with different shades of clouds.

Here it is cropped within the constraints of the 'window'. Notice here That I also added a wood effect to each of the 'wooden' panels using Photoshop and a turquoise diamond.

Here, in this screen capture from Paloma's website, we can see golden glows like fireflies - I decided to add these to my design too, it makes it more whimsical and also ties in the website designs to the poster.

After exposing the sunburst design, this is what I have so far in terms of clouds. I used the clouds effect to add more clouding around the edge of design. At the moment I think it looks a little much, and the sunbursts really need to be knocked back.

Here I am blurring the sunburst effect to try and make it more subtle. I also added a spotlight effect to the different icons.

Here I am experimenting with the Paloma Faith logo. I decided in the end to keep it simple with no effects at all.

I also tried it with her alternative logo. It looked kind of disjointed in comparison with the other, so I decided not to pursue this choice.

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - Research

According to the brief set by Talenthouse, the artwork for the Paloma Faith souvenir poster should be set at a 4:3 aspect ratio (recommended) and at 300 dpi with a maximum file size of 5mb.

It should be inspired by her current album artwork of the related album: 'A perfect contradiction'.

First thing that can be noticed about the album artwork of 'A perfect contradiction' is that it is heavily inspired by baroque paintings and fashion, and is a parody of Caravaggio's 'Entombment of Christ':

The number on the hotel door is 

Caravaggio's 'Entombment of Christ'

Some other Baroque style artwork:

Very dramatic lighting and beams of light are the key features I can see to this artwork for the disctinctive style.

I then got onto Baroque style architecture:

The key features in these designs is the different sections segmented by different shapes, framed in gold. The distinctive patterns and colours are easily transferrable into a graphic design for a 4:3 aspect ratio in a poster.

Visuals from Paloma's website in relation to the album:

The red door seems to bear a lot of significance in the current artwork. I have observed that on the album cover the hotel room door reads '8734' which may be a cool detail to include in the final design.

The colours of dark maroon, bright red, teal and gold are all very royal and baroque in style, and I should be sure to use them in the final design.

Lots of the symbols shown on the website can be incorporated into the final design to tie in the album artwork to the souvenir poster.

Observing the colours and shapes used here...

The dramatic clouding illustrations inspired by baroque paintings above can be seen on her website too, which is a feature I think I should include.

Typefaces:

Even though I have established the style used as Baroque, it also uses elements of Art Nouveau in the typeface choice and 1950's in the styling of Paloma herself.

I would like to use typefaces that don't contradict the logo itself 

Potential lettering to use:

'Desire' typeface

OUGD603 - Design for Paloma Faith - Brief

BRIEF TITLE: Design for Paloma Faith via Talenthouse

Brief:

Artists, designers and illustrators from around the world are invited by Paloma Faith to design their own interpretation of her amazing Platinum certified 3rd album, 'A Perfect Contradiction.'

Background:

Using her current artwork (originally designed and photographed by David Standish), music and general persona for inspiration, Paloma is looking for you to come up with your own eye catching design. There are no limitations on medium, however it needs to be a design that can later be turned into a limited edition poster.

Considerations:

All submissions will feature as part of a global gallery with public voting on Facebook and Twitter.

Talenthouse reserves the right to disqualify artists who we believe are cheating the voting system as this is against the spirit of the Creative Invite.

Inappropriate, offensive, harmful or submissions that do not fit the brief will be removed.

Mandatory Requirements:

Artists should retain their original artwork files (in 300dpi) but designs must be submitted in JPEG or PNG, max size 5MB.

All entries must be original artwork (meaning not using third party pre-existing copyright materials).

Artists must join Talenthouse using an active email address in order to ensure they can be contacted should they be selected.

Artists must have an up-to-date Talenthouse profile.

Artists must include a description about their submission and about themselves.

The copyright in and to the selected submission shall be owned by Sony Music.

The selected submission may be modified to accommodate production requirements.

Target Audience:

Paloma and her team of judges, including Rankin and Michael Stephens of Liberty London, will select one artist to receive a portfolio meeting with a Sony Music Creative, exposure for their artwork as her official social skins for a week and $1,300. Paloma's fans are also your target audience.

Tone of Voice:

Little to no text is required but if any is used it should follow the same language as her currently existing artwork.

Deliverables:

A poster design

Design boards also need to be created for presentation of your outcomes.

Reading list:

http://www.palomafaith.com/

http://palomafaith.tmstor.es/index.php?preview=on

http://instagram.com/palomafaith

Caravaggio