Devious Design

When you start a design project, your most necessary thing is a concept, an idea – inspiration. As long as you have a solid concept, you have a really good chance that your final product will be successful.

I’ll explain with some background:

Many times you hear people suggest starting an assigned project really early to get ahead. That has never worked for me. Not once.*  Any time I attempt to get a head start on a design project, I fail miserably because I get attached to my first attempt, which undoubtedly won’t work once all the necessary content – stories, photos, graphics, etc. – come in. And if you have a big client, you will probably have an excess of additional content and requests for changes arriving later – or much later – than you’d like. (Usually, the fatal flaw in my first attempt is that I try to work with what I have rather than what I may or may not eventually receive. It’s just as frustrating to have to redesign something because you never received enough content.)

It is extremely stressful to have to go back and make significant layout changes late in the game. This is where your concept development comes into play. If you have a simple, flexible, developed concept, on-deadline work will be much easier to build – and hopefully your final product will be more cohesive and visually stunning.

An example of simple concept development:

Goal: 2-page newspaper spread on campus safety
Initial visual inspiration: Caution tape and the little criminal dude on neighborhood watch signs
Colors that go with that imagery: Yellow and black
What else is yellow/black/criminal? The Watchmen comics

BAM – now you know the look to persue. From there you develop further.

What kind of fonts would fit with that theme?
Well, it should look gothic, like a metropolitan city at night – skyscrapers, streets, taxis. Maybe think comic books ­– Batman, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sin City. So, let’s try Franklin Gothic or some other sans-serif font, preferably with both a condensed and a extra bold version, like Univers.

How are you going to get it to look as dark as you think it should?
Reverse the type.

What if we don’t have photos or illustrations?
Resurrect the little neighborhood watch dude! And make him big so he becomes a design element rather than a goofy decoration. (It’s fun to experiement with scale.)

Now what do you do?
Open your InDesign document. You already know it’s going to have a black background, yellow text and an ultra-condensed gothic-style font. Having these basics figured out gives you all the flexibility you need to quickly create a cohesive design. Now all you have to do is tedious work – waiting for your content, placing it, lining things up and tweaking it until everything fits comfortably – but the cool, conceptual part was done before you even started.

And here it is:

All you needed was some inspiration.

* Let me clarify: Working ahead has never worked for a layout in a design project that I was developing for other people and waiting for content. It generally works brilliantly for other endeavors.

I love the band Tool – I just need to throw that out there. They’re angry, witty, heavy, artistic and legitimately good musicians. And they have awesome album artwork. For example, their last two albums, 10,000 Days and Lateralus, featured Alex Grey‘s work, and before that, Aenima featured the work of Cam de Leon. But the coolest part about all of their more recent albums is the packaging, because, honestly, cool packaging is the only reason I’ll buy a CD. If  it has boring packaging I’ll find another means to satisfy my music fix. So kudos to Adam Jones for being the coolest guitarist/art director/special effects guy ever.

The packaging for 10,000 Days is very cool, with stereoscopic lenses so you can see all the artwork in 3D. Aenima has a lenticular cover, so the images change as you move the case around. Plus this album is great anyway. Good for driving during rush hour.

Here are a few more of my favorite album artwork:

1. Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero
I’m actually not a huge fan of the cover – it strikes me as boring and forgettable (in fact, I had Google it to remember what the cover even looked like – it’s the disk itself that’s the cool part. You open the CD and it’s black, but after it warms up a bit while it’s playing, you pop it out and suddenly it’s white. It’s an interesting idea, I just wish the rest of the packaging matched it in coolness.

2. The Beatles – Revolver
I love this album. And the artwork. Klaus Voormann. I love line drawings. That and the additional collage bits work very well together, and it’s a style that’s been repeated quite a bit since 1966 when Revolver was released, both with parodies and legitimate tributes, a few of which can be found here: http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/beatles-revolver-parodies/.

3. Radiohead – In Rainbows
This is another album with fun packaging. It was originally released with a “name your own price” digital download, and then the hard copy was released in January 2008. Stanley Donwood designed the artwork, and I love the unconventional typography and use of color. Plus it came with a bunch of stickers so you can design it yourself – at least a bit.

That’s all I have for now, and I still haven’t figured out how to get my images to show up. (Help!)

Later I’ll chat about these, my honorable mentions for best album art:

Thom Yorke – The Eraser
Explosions In The Sky – The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
Norah Jones – Not Too Late
Deftones – White Pony
Radiohead – Hail To The Thief
Bright Eyes – Casadaga

And tune in next time for: Spiffy logo designs