Verbal Acrobatics: Nas typographic poster

I want to do something different with Nas, to break way from the previous two posters I've done and also because I can't consolidate a consistent visual style and theme throughout Nas' album covers, he has no real iconic visual style, in terms of type and colour schemes.

The most memorable aspect of Nas' album covers and visual material is his head, or himself overlaid on top of a Queensbridge skyline. In particular for the song I've picked, 'It Ain't Hard to Tell' off the classic Illmatic album over.

So I want to somehow incorporate his face with typography and create a face out of typography and go from there.

This top is pretty close to what I had in mind! I'm going to just try and make it a bit more playful and reflect hip-hop a bit more with more movement and looseness like the song in question "It Ain't Hard To Tell"

I like how this typography takes the shape or atleast suggests a 3d elements on the poster so I aim to do this with Nas.

Read More

WEB: CD Packaging

In terms of handing in my web brief for the design for web part of Design Production (504) I'm thinking I'll hand it in on a CD with the website root folder on it with all the website contents inside. It gives me a chance to present the website in some physical form for module submission.

I want to create a paper case that's different from the bog standard cd sleeve. Some examples I've found of what's possible with CD packaging...

My favourite is the above, with the above 2 pictures. It's simple and functional, with the CD neatly lifting up making pulling it out easy. The net for this will be simple and I'll probably go ahead and produce the net for this making sure it's visually consistent with website and summer research.

Read More

Verbal Acrobatics: Motion posters

Found some cool examples of animated posters which I feel help me to get an idea of what's already out there in terms of posters which at first glance look pretty standard but have an animated layer to them too.

http://www.reviewstl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Ignition_Saw3d.swf

Most of them tend to flash .swf files which I find a bit sluggish, wouldn't a high quality .gif be better and less annoying? I was planning on converting my printable posters into animated .gifs

Read More

Verbal Acrobatics: Visual references

I'm already a big fan of Berlin based studio, Hort - some of their work nearly nails the vision I had for my posters for the print + web musical typography I'm working on. Especially in terms of layout, handwritten aesthetic and colour palettes.

Each poster will be unique to the artists sound, existing visual styles such as album covers and message and tone within the song.

Animated posters too, i intend to animate the elements within the posters and not animate through posters but this is cool too.

This is my favourite, this kind of style works so well for the early 90s, late 80s.

References from elsewhere:

Read More

ISTD: 90s Hip-Hop visuals

In my mind, 90's hip-hop is when things got grittier and much more darker, especially in the mid to late 90s and I want to reflect this through the designs, the audience for this will be design students, but as I'm not entering I'm aiming this towards hip-hop heads. There was still plenty of more laid back rap music out there, such aas the stuff by A Tribe Called Quest.

Read More

ISTD: 80s Hip-Hop visuals

For my Print and Web brief focusing on creating typographic music deliverables across print and digital.

I'm going to be focusing on hip-hop in the 80s against hip-hop in the 90s and showcase the differences and similarities between them visually.

Here are some examples which I find are really useful in capturing the hip-hop scene in the 80s, one of the core concepts of the brief is to capture the vibe, sound and emotion of each song. I'm yet to decide on which artists to focus on but the aim is to pick a minimum of 2 from each decade (80s and 90s) which I feel are all different in tone and musical style as you can see. You get the gritty political stuff, then you get the happy-go-lucky hip-hop music which was blowing up in the 80's.

Read More