OUGD406 - Studio Brief 1 - Initial thumbnails

Initially I drew some ideas for the two songs that I thought that I would create designs for. Although when it came round to drawing ideas for Maccabees - Go I didn't have as many as I thought I would. The main lyrics of the piece are about a woman sat in the sunshine of a window so I took this literally. I don't think that it would create an effective record sleeve. For St Vincent, however, when I first watched the video I immediately thought of a futuristic dystopian world like in the book 1984, where digital media has taken over the world. So I had lots of ideas, my favourite image would be the girl with the tv for a head, suggesting that all is on her mind is Tv.

I further developed some ideas on the dystopian idea for St Vincent by using more imagery of children as they are gullible and very impressionable. So I used a little boy being brainwashed by what he is watching on the TV, with hypnotic eyes. I really like the idea of illuminating him with just the light from the TV in a dark room. I also thought about using radio waves and digital waves for a more minimalistic cover. I also tried to do some designs for Underworld - Born Slippy, from which I got a very chaotic and destructive vibe. One of the ideas came from the mark making task that we did where I drew a drew a city scape with an explosion by moving the paper rather than moving the pen. Also I wanted to play on the references of drugs in there. I feel like the song is about someone screaming for help from his mental illness and he tries to make it go away through drugs and of course lager. 

I had lots of ideas for St Vincent and moved onto including her iconic look into the designs. I thought that I could use her figure like a radio antennae, broadcasting her message to the world. I also thought I should do a typographic piece for the song, and the lyric that really stood out for me was "I want all of your mind." Going along with my idea of brainwashing, it suggests the media wants everyone's minds and attention. Additionally, going back to the 1984 theme I thought that I could play on the idea that "Big Brother is watching you" and use a CCTV camera with an eye in it. I then did some initial ideas for The Chemical Brothers. The first thing in the video that really stood out to me was the clock and it is featured throughout to plant the video back into normality. Also I thought that I could feature the girl who dances, overlaying the images to create an effect of movement. 

These were my least favourite thumbnails for The Chemical Brothers and The Rolling Stones. I tried to use the lyrics of the songs to create imagery like in "Let Forever Be" they repeat the lyrics 'screaming a symphony' and I thought that I could do a typographic piece on this. Also some of the lyrics relating to drug use in the song says that they feel like they are "sailing in the wind", so I drew the obvious sail ship in the clouds. Of course, with the whole music video based around kaleidoscopes I thought I could create my own using psychedelic colours to show the drug use in the song. Next for the Rolling stones I took key elements from the lyrics like the "Silk covered chair" and the "Pink Cadillac" to create abstract illustrations for the cover. Also I thought of playing with the lyric "I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon" and I could take a spoon and a needle and repeat it in a tiled pattern to show that he turned to repetitive drug use to get through everyday.