Covers past and previous
As I talked about in the last post, I had a vision from the get-go what my cover was going to look like. The snag was it wasn’t my vision after all, turns out it all came from the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo. The song had made me think about the kind of music you get in the background of movies which creates the atmosphere — non-diegetic if I remember correctly but don’t blame me if its not because I don’t have time to check that because I’m sitting here furiously typing out this post to make my deadlines.
After a little research into the song itself, I found another promising discovery. The song had been written for the sole purpose of featuring in a silent movie’s soundtrack from the 1920s. The film which this song takes its name from is about life in the newly revolted Russian empire (this is where red and yellow come from). It was seen as an experimental piece for it featured no story line and no dialogue but still lasts for over an hour as each scene is followed by a completely unrelated scene of life in poverty stricken Russia. Even more interesting was the fact the soundtrack was never overlaid onto the movie, instead played live alongside the film live for a small crowd at a obscure film festival only once.
The fact the song was a living breathing soundtrack to a movie alongside my less than unique vision of a movie poster convinced me to create an album cover following the 50s movie poster style instead of previous album covers. I began by researching Saul Bass, the designer behind Vertigo’s poster and many more movie posters around the same period. Below I’ve selected pieces that were most influential in the process:
Another designer I came across whilst researching paper cut at the suggestion of Ali (sound suggestion) was Henrii Matise. Both artists here were famous for creating paper-cut work in the 1950s.
Humble Expert Opinion on the ‘art’ — key points:
· Bass would refined an image again and again until only the key elements remained, enough without context to explain the design
· Matise went for the more abstract look, just look at the snail, no words needed
· Typography wise only Bass used it following the same style of cut out design bringing the whole design together
· The colours used in all the designs are blocky (must be a better word) giving each section is distinct boundary and again simplifying the design
· Shape wise nothing fits perfectly and that’s really the beauty of the style as it creates a tactile piece of work
