ARTIST STATEMENT

I decided to create a CD cover for the artist Jack Johnson whose genre of music is soft/alternative rock. To make the CD cover appealing, I made sure to follow some of the rules of C.R.A.P.  Because I wanted the cover to reflect the type of music that Jack Johnson plays, I picked very soft colors that contrasted well with each other. The green and the blue go well together and focus the viewer’s attention on the main part of the image, which is the blackbird.  I also followed the rules of alignment by aligning and organizing the text in a top-down manner.  I didn’t want the viewer to get lost while looking at the cover.

I needed to overcome many obstacles when creating the CD cover. Before I created this cover, I had a totally different concept in mind.  I was going to do a jazz CD cover, with a silhouette of a person on a white background and the artist’s name and the CD title in a bold font.  The image I created did not express the genre of the music well, and it looked unorganized and visually unappealing. I commissioned my work and was given a lot of feedback on how to make the design stronger.  I redesigned the cover based on this feedback, but I was still unhappy with how the cover looked.  For this reason, I started again from scratch with a different concept and image.  While looking through my hard drive, I found a photo that I had taken at a park and decided to use that for the CD cover.  Because parts of the image were unnecessary, I cropped a selection of the more effective parts of the picture to include on the cover.  I then manipulated the image on Photoshop to make it stand out more.  To do this, I adjusted the levels, brightness, and contrast.  I had difficulty choosing the right font to go with the picture. I didn’t want it to be too bold to take away from the actual picture, and the font needed to have a softer look in order to reflect the genre of music.  I chose a font that was thinner and gave it a drop shadow to make it more visible.  I chose “Do You Remember” as the CD title because the image reflects the uplifting, calm, and happy mood in this Jack Johnson song.  Because the original background was white and too plain, I added a blue background and changed the opacity so it flows well with the rest of the picture.

Overall, I believe that the final product turned out to be very strong. I am happy with how it looks, and I believe that it could be a possible album cover for Jack Johnson.