CD Cover Design Project

Kalistenic

Kalistenic is a Romanian band formed in 

late March 2011.Kalistenic brings a distinct sound to the romanian music scene. Having aselect lineup with members influenced by a lot of various genres, Kalistenic combines groove and prog metal to bring a unique sound to the metal industry. George, Loris, Razvan and Gabi recorded their first demo in June 2011, and had their live debut in August 2011. Along with Andrei, their newest member, they are working on new tracks soon to be heard on their upcoming album.

CD Cover

All the photos I used as experiments and the final CD cover were provided by Valeriu Catalineanu - the photographer- himself. He send me these photos for free without any Copyrights condition to use only for this project.   

I used Face your Fears font downloaded for free from dafont.com. I used this font because I do consider that it fits for the genre of music the band promotes. 'Alone I die' - the title of the CD- is actually one of their Hits, yet the font is connected to the message that the song expresses. I chose black as a colour because black is a trademark for rock metal music, yet I wanted to create a specific atmosphere. I chose this photo because it is very expressive according to the title. 

Photographic Case Studies

The message 'You can help. Stop global warming' is significant accentuated by an image that presents two penguins: a mother and her child. They are looking helpless to a container of toxic substances that are burning, a factor that causes global warming. The background is apocalyptic, presenting the destruction of Earth, the main colour being grey. The only bright colours are the ones from the message and orange, colour of fire. This picture expresses depression, making the main message more dramatic. The whole advertisement captures the human attention by presenting a possible hypothesis of global warming, fact that probably would not capture the attention without a strong image. Even the message is written on bin trash metal, expressing the idea that this will be our last material if we continue to destroy the natural resources.

Having penguins as the main characters, the ad conceptualize the human feelings and kindness for animals and the campaign advices us to protect animals’ natural habitats in order to save the Planet. The way penguins are looking at the container gives a strong emotion and sadness, forcing us to be more careful with our lifestyle.

The message captures a strong meaning by adding this apocalyptic image, thus the main purpose of the campaign, to alert people about the global warming, is accomplished.  

 As the obesity is a global issue that few of us are conscious about, this campaign alerts overweight people that ‘Obesity kills’. It is used the most common killing arm: a pistol, making the message obvious for everyone. The pistol is actually a chocolate tablet and the bullet is the bitten part of the tablet. The excess of sugar, in this case chocolate, is the first cause of obesity, yet the image has a strong impact. The message ‘Obesity takes one life every 12 seconds’ is demonstrated by the concept of the photo.

Own the Colour

Tiffany & Co box

Tiffany Blue

Tiffany & Co blue colour is trademarked in the US and elsewhere. This nuance of blue expresses elegance and luxury. It gives the experience of touching the finest and royal jewellery, yet customers can actually feel the pure form of the jewellery only by looking at the blue little box. The colour is produced by Pantone, with PMS number 1837 which means the year of Tiffany & Co fondation. The colour is not printed in the Pantone Marching System and it is available only for the company. This nuance of blue is so famous that it has a Wikipedia page.

   

                                                                              Pullman Brown

UPS Truck

The brown colour used by UPS is now a trademarked for the company. They used the same brown nuance for their trucks since 1916. In 1998 a former UPS executive explain their reasons of choosing this colour: 'it was the epitome of luxury at the time' The brand's tagline is 'What can Brown do for you?' Brown gives a serious overlook for the company, as they based their services on professionalism.This colour is also associate with plainness in some cultures over the world. 

Sourcing Images

http://www.alamy.com has a range of photos, from Winter category to Portrait. The site has 45.91 million stock images and 308.384 video clips. The prices for photos are fixed for any photo, depending on the purpose of the image use.  For Presentation the price is £15.00, for website design £29.00, small business marketing £39.00 and for large business marketing the price is £149.0. All the photos are sold in two formats, RM and RF. The photos can be bought online.

http://www.istockphoto.com offers only paid photos from £58 ending up to £250,000. The prices depend on the purpose of the image use and the size. Photos can be bought with credits bought from the site (10 credits- £13.75, 1000 credits- £1,012.00 and so on). There are not any free photos, but as long as a photo is bought the customer received all the copyrights for his purpose.

http://www.dreamstime.com offers free photos, the only condition being to have an account. The registration is also free.

http://www.imagesource.com - the site provides photos from £25.00 to £500.00 depending on the size (from XXS to XL).

https://www.flickr.com offers free photos under Creative Commons licensing or copyright rules imposed by users. The advance search available on Flicker has a section (on the bottom of the page) named creative commons. Ticking the box ‘Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content  ‘ the other two sections will be available. By checking both of them (Find content to use commercially ;   Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon ) ,the site will show the available photos to download for free and without any copyright mention.  

Feeling the Colours

Colour Association

Pink Candy, Disneyland
Blue: Sky, Skype, Ocean
Orange: Fire, Heat
Yellow: Sun, Jealousy
White: Diamond, Wedding, Pure, Heaven
Gray: Car, Sadness,Ash
Green: Eco, Grass
Purple: Royal, Unite Curzon,
Red: Valentine's Day, Christmas 
Black: Chanel, Elegance

Creative Shapes in Logo

The logo has a powerful concept as it illustrates two hands forming the letter 'U', also used for 'you'. The message, 'uResearch Media' has a powerful meaning as it theory up the power which is in our hands to understand and control the Media around us. 

This logo materializes the idea of being eco-friendly and it encourages us to use the electricity as few as possible. The 'e' letter - first letter of 'eco' - is made with a plug and it has a leaf as a symbol for the nature. The logo successfully capture the cold war between nature and artificial resources as electricity.  


The 'Water Empire' logo has a crown made with water, inspiring the supremacy of this water brand.

 Long Neck Music made a logo to express every single word that composed their brand. The note, a symbol for music, is also a part of a giraffe body capturing the attention on the long neck, trademark for the brand.

The Black Cat logo is made from white letters written on a black background. But what is very interesting is the fact that the 'C' letter from the both words are actually the cat's eyes.


This logo is actually a game of words. The 'chemistry' and 'tree' words create chemistree. The logo can be seen from two opposite sides: the tree has a trunk made with test tube or the test tube's cloud is the upper branches. The irony is that chemistry explored on a wide level can destroy the nature and the clouds made by it are nothing but green.

Source: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/

Bright Ideas Design Business Card - Final

Having the concept of 'less is more' in mind, I wanted to create a simple but expressive business card to express bright ideas but I let a mystery, by the simplistic form of the card to encourage the customer to experience by themselves the Bright Ideas experience. 

The logo of Bright Ideas is inspired by a light bulb, the symbol of ideas. Having the 'light bulb' in mind I used bright colour circles to drawn it in Illustrator (in the first instance I used Photoshop but I redrawn it in Illustrator) I wanted to make something funky but at the same time something professional, yet the card can be used for Hipsters as well as for businessmen. I chose to make it double sides because, from my point of view, it is more attractive and interesting. The first side I wanted to be as a cover page for the back, opening the contact details and. 

I used Neutra Dispaly - 18 pt. (Light and Medium for my surname). I do believe that it fits with the light bulb, making the business card simple, yet funky. 

 I kept the logo on every side to create a symmetry and I put my details in the centre of the page. I inserted my real website in order to offer more details about design and my work, pretending that I am one of the Brigh Ideas Design Staff. 

Bright Ideas Business Card - Experiment I

My first business card for Bright Ideas

For the first experiment I used Papyrus font (12 pt.) to write Bright Ideas and I drawn some lines to express the perspective in ideas. I inserted my contact details in different position because I did not want to have anything on the centre.






For e-mail I used Minion Pro -Medium (10 pt.)
For the telephone number I used Orator Std - Medium (10 pt.)
For the site I used Minion Pro - Medium (12 pt.)
 Card dimensions: 85mm; 50 mm
' Design For You' - 9 pt.

  

Visualising Words

Words: Backward, Forward, Motion, Mixed, Conversation, Stretch, Shrink, Ideas, Expand, Repeat, Perspective

Shape & Form - Case Studies

The American Express logo is in a shape of square. The font covers, the mid section and the rest of the areas is empty. This makes the logo more prominent. This logo is formed with two colours: blue and white. The background of the logo is blue sky colour and the fonts are accentuated by the white stroke. The combination of colours gives a strong visual effect to the overall design. The text in the American Express logo is situated in the centre, giving a professional appearance. The font used is blod and clear, giving it a unique position in the eyes of the viewers.

The Pepsi logo uses the colours that made the brand famous. Red and blue are two completely opposite colours, contrasting each other. The 2 disks of the globe are separated by a white swirl, capturing the attention in the centre. The fonts appear along with the globe which gibes the logo a simple but interesting look. The Pepsi font is inscribed in white. The logo font is simple, yet attractive and outstanding, thanks to the use of italicized roman type face. 

Amazon.com has used several logos over the years. The current Amazon logo depicts the message that they are selling everything, from A to Z, as the arrow that bounds the A letter with Z suggests. In addition, the arrow below the wordmark suggests a smile that customers would experience buying from this site. In terms of colours, the black in the Amazon logo represents dominance on the market, supremacy and elegance, while orange colour stand for pride and happiness. 

The differences between them are visible as all of the companies described above, activate in opposite domains. Pepsi and Amazon logos express joy, while American Express is more formal.