SOCO MUSIC - Sounds Of Southampton- Volume 4
Sticker Designs
SOCO MUSIC - Album Designs
Design #1
The inspiration for these designs were:
Gorillaz - Demon Days
Gorillaz - Humanz (Deluxe)
Skepta - Ignorance is Bliss
Tame Impala - Currents
Tame Impala - The Slow Rush
The Brief
Design #2
As set in the brief, we used these references for our designs.
you can see in the artworks, that I really liked the grid style of the references and chose that as a main design point. We chose the graffiti style font for a lot of the designs because we wanted to implement some street style into the pieces
VisualCV Creative Suite
I feel as though I have followed the brief quite closely. I believe I have “captured the essence of Southampton” with my designs.
I really enjoy how bold the colours I used are, I think that this looks grungy and like you’re at a gig.
Although the designs are very similar, the differences that they have are quite easy to spot. for example, the first designs font is more simplistic than the second, the images are also different, but again show similarities, they’re both in an underground, tunnel environment and both share a very red/ blue colour pallet. In my opinion, these things compliment the briefs’ task of finding the music scene in Southampton and bringing it to focus.
My group decided on using stickers as a way of public advertisement, our idea was to use the stickers and place them in a heavy traffic area, such as lampposts and bins near and around West Quay, that way, our designs would be showcased, but also the SOCO Music Charity, getting their name out there more so that more people will know what is it, and hopefully use their services. I think stickers are beneficial, and a good piece of merchandise. “Because stickers are a part of every culture, they’re easy to distribute and have a wide variety of uses.” - (Jukebox Print 2021)
SoCo Music Project’s fundraising campaign is designed to encourage people to give more, and not just in terms of money, but in terms of donating musical instruments as well, by also showing how music can transform lives. With emotional storytelling, video content, and impact data, the campaign will demonstrate how music education transforms people’s lives, builds confidence, creates opportunities, and empowers the youth and those who use the charities services. At the heart of the campaign will be a merchandise range limited-edition t-shirts, tote bags and posters. Which will all be uploaded onto my online portfolio. My group will be producing a variety of design work that follows the guidelines of the brief, to create a different and new look for the Sounds of Southampton Volume 4, album cover.
The programmes I used for this project were Procreate and Adobe Capture. I decided on using these two because I really like how simple they are. With procreate, I liked that its easy for me to understand and I can get all the same effects from adobe software, like illustrator and photoshop. Adobe Capture was helpful for getting colour pallets, creating boards and libraries of images in Southampton from my primary research.
For my research, I went around Southampton, taking pictures of the graffiti, buskers and other interesting things around the city, I got a few images for my designs from SoCo’s previous gigs and shows. I used these images in my designs as instructed by the client. The brief states they want a sort of graffiti/street style for the typography, and for the imagery they wanted the group to take inspiration from the likes of Skepta, Gorillaz, and Tame Impala. They wanted our designs to intrigue people who like indie, hip-hop, pop, and alternative music and people between the ages of 18-35. We wanted to capture the alternative side of Southampton, using our designs to influence the public to listen to the album and support the charity. I also created a colour pallet based on the inspiration given to us in the brief, the colours I chose were warm but vibrant tones, like red, yellows and orange but I also chose to do some neutrals like green and some blues as well to balance out my designs a bit more, I thought that if there was too much warmth without a break, the designs would get boring and uninteresting. I also chose a lot of free, graffiti styled fonts from “Dafont”, to use in this project, I think that style of font goes well with the tones I chose to use because of the other stickers/posters surrounding my designs will be in a well graffitied are such as walls/ street signs, lampposts, and billboards. I think the designs work well on the tote bags as well, I don’t think that the work looks too outstanding but looks like something you would see in you day to day.
In the group, there was quite a bit of disturbance with the lack of communication, almost 1 week into the project, and as the project manager, it made it very hard to keep track of where everyone was at, the group didn’t really stay together, there was maybe a few messages sent with e ach member involved between the start and end of the semester. Although all the disruptions within the group, I still managed to communicate with Frazer a lot and talk with her about where we were at and what needed to be done. Me and Frazer worked well together, we shared ideas and designs, and I think that if it were just us two it would have run a lot smoother, because we didn’t know where the other team member was or what work they had completed/had not completed.
I don’t believe there was a whole lot of communication with the client, although we did ask about the imagery for the project. As the client didn’t provide and photography for the project, we had to ask what to use, in response, they said to use images from the previous album.
Our original idea was to create a range of merchandise, from posters and album, covers, to tote-bags and stickers. A lot of the designs are kept simple, this is for better public acknowledgment and understanding. I think that even though the target audience is 18-35, we still want to promote the charity to everyone and get the brands name more advertised, which in turn will promote and help grow the charity. I think that I have completed an ok amount of work, I know I could have done a lot more and planning would have helped as well, but the work that I did complete I believe is done to the best of my abilities. I really like my sticker designs, especially the disco ball one, because I learned a few new skills in procreate and I am really happy with how it turned out. I do not like my album cover designs, I feel like they are all quite similar to each other and I think that I could have designed a lot more varieties that are different from each other, whether that be the colours that I used or the placement of the text/images.
I think to improve the work that I have done, I could have used a variety of programmes to upscale the quality of the work, although I like how easy procreate is, I always feel like my work isn’t as high quality as it would be, I think to get better looking pieces I should have used Adobe Illustrator/ photoshop, I think that they would have made my own designs better looking and given them a bit more structure and weight. I also would have planned out the project a lot more, most of the time I didn’t know what to do and id often find myself feeling stuck and procrastinating, so if I was given the chance to redo this project, I would create a detailed plan of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. This will give not only me, but the rest of my group a better chance of staying on target for the entirety of the project. I would also communicate more and keep up to date with the whole group and the client, who admittedly, was quite hard to get a hold of given his busy schedule. None the less, we continued without a lot of the client’s input. I think for future projects, we would need a client who is easier to get a hold of, so that we can share out ideas and designs with them and see how they feel about them before we go ahead and make them high quality.
To conclude this project, I think I could have done better, apart from some bubble maps in the beginning and end, I did not do any planning, and as a group we rarely communicated, making it extremely difficult to get anything done. I will take this as a learning opportunity, because, although my final designs are not very high quality or high resolution, without the communication it was hard for me to know what anyone else had completed. In the future, I will use programmes like Trello to create timelines for each deadline within the project, I will communicate with not only my client, but my group as well so that we can all be on the same page, I will also set personal goals for myself to keep myself up to date, on target and free from procrastination. For this project, I do not think there is a lot I can say, I do think the work I did design turned out well and captures my vision correctly, even though the quality is not the best, I still think I have done well but, I do not think I have produced enough work to be completely satisfied. I think in future projects, I would not take on the roll of project manager, especially when the group falls apart not even one week in, but I think I would prefer a designer roll, because then I do not feel responsible for everyone’s schedules and timeframes when I cannot even use or create one for myself.
references
-Penny, B. (2021) Why stickers should be a part of your merch plan, Jukebox Print. Available at: https://www.jukeboxprint.com/blog/Why-Stickers-Should-Be-a-Part-of-Your-Merch-Plan (Accessed: 11 March 2025).
-Manu S. Pillai (2019) Ignorance is Bliss [CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Boy Better Know https://g.co/kgs/anRSSFr
-Jamie Hewlett (2005) Demon Dayz [CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Parlophone Records & Virgin Records
-Jamie Hewlett (2017) Humanz [CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Parlophone Records (UK) & Warner Bros. Records (US)
-Neil Krug & Keving Parker (2020) The Slow Rush [CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Interscope Records (US) & Friction Records (UK)
-Robert Beaty (2015) Currents [CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Modular Records https://g.co/kgs/XSBrL8Y
-Jerry Finn (2001) All Killer No Filler [ CD/ Vinyl/ Online] Aquarius Records (US) & Island Records (Canada)