Claudia Wingrove A2 Portfolio

At a young age Carter turned to raping to escape from the drugs and poverty that surrounded him and in 1989 he began working with the rapper Jaz-O to record a song called 'The Originators' which later won both the rappers an appearance on an episode of Yo! MTV Raps.

In 1996 Carter released his first album 'Reasonable Doubt' that reached No. 23 on the Billboard 200, and in 1998 he released his second album 'Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life' the title track later famously became featured in the Broadway musical Annie and then nominated for a Grammy. 

In 2003 Jay-Z retired from raping but began to creating music again three years later. In 2009 'Blueprint 3' was released along side two others, the trio of albums released marked a significant time in the development of Jay-Z's sound and music from rap to more R&B/ soulful.
During his break from rapping, Jay-Z moved his attention to the business side of music, signing a $150 million contract with the company Live Nation that then grew in size to be later renamed Roc Nation, a company that handles artists careers. Jay-Z became the president of Def Jam, Jay-Z and later signed artists such as Rihanna, Ne-Yo and Kanye West through the company to develop and transition their artistic talents.

Main Image 

The main image consists of a white background and a pile of white painted musical instruments and speakers. The contrast between white and black creates a separation from the body of the instruments to the black keys and buttons stand out. Across this image are three red lines that both signifies the release of Jay-Z's trio of albums and a more mathematical definition when two formula's are logically equivalent when all models give them the same value.

On this magazine advert there are two titles, the name of the artist and the name of the Album. The name 'Jay-Z' is written in a bold and wide blank font, it is centralised on the poster, above the three red lines which helps it to stand out. The actual font itself dominates and is one of the first things that the receiving audience will look at. The simplicity of the poster enables the primary focus to fall on the name of the artist and the red three lines in the middle of the poster.                                                                                                              

The font used for the album name is different to the one used for the artists name, it is smaller than the name title which connotes that Jay-Z may have been selling the album with his name as a primary selling rather than the title of the album. This shows that Jay-Z's name is more recognisable and that he wanted the title of the album to be the selling point for the album.

The edited overlaid three lines are centralised on the background of the poster, covering the background design of white painted musical instruments piled on top of one another. The title of the album and the artists name is edited and placed above the background of instruments and the information involving the album release and credits are placed at the bottom of the poster with equal spacing between the three sections of information.

We have three different types of font on this advert. First is the name of the artist, written in bold, black cursive, it seems to have been stretched in an irregular font and stands out dramatically. The second style of font is the title of the album, the size is smaller than the title of the artist and is printed in black, capital narrow font. The information telling the audience the release of the album also uses the same font as the one used for the title of the album. The third font is used to print the artists website. It is written in capitals and published in a smaller font than the size used to tell the audience about the release of the album. This shows that this piece of information is more of a minor heading.

The colour scheme consists of both bright and dark colours, the background includes the white, grey and lighter purple colours in the colour scheme. The font that is edited and overlaid across the background uses black and the triple bar across the centre of the poster is in bright red, though only slightly transparent the colour is darker in some places due to the background instruments.

Student One: 

This is my final design for my Back Cover. I used the same colour scheme as the one on the front cover to follow a theme that will create the entire album. The white outline of the fingerprint is merged into the background colour, this enabled me to foreground the list of songs that will feature on the album with a brighter white coloured text.

I centralised the text in the middle of the back cover design and and purposely moved the fingerprint drawing off centre. I chose to move the drawing because I believe that if it was centralised with the text overlaid on top then the audience would be distracted from design. Not having the two aligned separates the text from the image. The type of text used to list the title of the songs is written in a simple, easy to read text. The non-fancy font lacks connotations, this means that this design becomes less dominant over the front cover design.

1. Single Line Outline (4 Votes)

2. Double Hand Effect (1 Vote)

3. Thick Outline Design (0 Votes)

The overall feedback listed that the Single Line Outline was the best size, after receiving this information I carried on with the original design.

I used the drawing program 'Illustrator' to enable me to draw an outline from the drawing. I used the 'curvature' tool where I dragged and shaped a sculpting line around the edge of the drawing. I had to change the settings of this tool so that when I was creating the outline the lines would not infill. I changed the shaping tool to a white colour so that it would stand out against the picture. Using the ability to hide layers, I was able to remove the image of the hands from my drawing to see the development of it. I had never used this program before, so by exploring a new platform I was able to expand on my ability to edit and to apply this to grow my artistic talent.  

Once I finished editing I changed the colour of the outline to black so that when I got rid of the image behind it I was left with my outline drawing. I used the outline thickness '2' throughout the digital outline so that it would create a this even outline throughout the drawing. I chose to create a design like this for the front cover of my digipak because it holds a simplistic beauty that creates a personal touch to the design of the album and an overall athletically pleasing design. 

The representation of hands are a stigma for my character as they enable him to portray his emotions and slow inclination of mental health. From on going research, the use of touch enables people to calm down from panic attacks, fidgeting and enables a person to receive a general acknowledgement of comfort.