Graphic Design
Spring Semester 2010
Final Examination

FINAL FOR Lisa Guzman

Instructions: Please read all of the following information carefully:

Create a new folder on your “My Documents on daisy” student folder, call it “lastname_final.” All of the work for this final will be saved into this folder and the folder will be submitted for grading. Download the file called "CD_Cover_Template.PSD" and save it into your Lastname_final folder. Open this file in Photoshop.

This final is a “mini project” which will allow you to demonstrate all of the skills that you have learned over the year. It is primarily a “Graphic Design Process” exercise, but please make sure to incorporate as much of your learning as you can into the project:

• Filters • Blending Options • Fills
• Layer Blends • Attach Text to Path • Cutting Objects from Backgrounds
• Shapes • Strokes • Image Adjustments
• Patterns • Gradients • Transformations

In addition, I would like to see evidence of the various Visual Communications exercises which we did this year, as well as some of the “History of Graphic Design” problems completed this semester.

THE MINI-PROJECT:

You are a graphic designer and you have been given the opportunity to create the CD graphics for a new album. Before you get started, you should review the following information regarding your album:

Genre: Alternative
Artist: Rogue Wave
Album Title: "Out of the Shadows"
Short Review:

The ability to resist the urge to splashily throw oneself into the world with overstated and exuberant spontaneity is a fine virtue. Everybody likes it easy, but we also like to search below the surface when we find such individuals that don't let it all hang out for the world to see. The curiosity has been piqued, the mind engaged, and our attention remains on guard, understanding that the understated one's among us hide vast treasures below a bland surface. They're the classic book with the crappy cover.
Zach Rogue has mastered such surface-only understated simplicity. With a voice and songwriting skills from another decade, he has harnessed the power of folk and placed it alongside hipster indie sensibilities to create some of the sweetest melodies since Simon and Garfunkel sang about the "Sound of Silence." Indeed, Rogue's own "Falcon Settles Me" is uncannily indebted to the duo. "You are the seed and I am the planter" he whispers over a tepid acoustic path, a fitting analogy for a record that tends to grow on you like a flower, working its way up through the system until blooming through the senses.


It's the strength of the opening four songs, however, that will immediately bring the listener back. Like a small puzzle, when played together their interconnectedness adds up to more than the sum of their individual parts.


On "Postage Stamp World," Rogue lambastes modern romanticism. "There she was/ a silky starlet/ pressed up to the screen/ captivated by social retards...her heart will feel no pain." He finds trouble with himself and the men around him on "Man-Revolutionary!" first deciding that "It's completely normal/ well I guess.../ I wanna be on the right end," and then concluding "It's completely morbid/ I'm aghast/ I wanna be on the right end. "


Touring with The Shins this summer only worked to connect Rogue Wave to the type of audience that would have taken to them anyways, quickening their rise to a solid platform of respect and admiration among the in crowd. So they reworked the album cover art from the tour album to something more artsy and colorful (not at all unlike The Shins art for "Chutes Too Narrow") and set a "release date" for late summer, allowing their mystique to grow amid toiling word-of-mouth rumors and internet fanaticism. It's hard to understand, then, how such a smart and self-aware group missed perfection by including a clunky, lazy, boring song called "Perfect" to close the album. Or did they? Maybe the refrain-"everything was perfect till you came around"- repeated over and over in the song was one of those ironically self-imposing efforts at weakness through forced self-deprecation and humiliation. Oh, they're just so clever.

Sound clips from your album:

-Clip #1: Kicking My Heart Out

-Clip #2: Man-Revolutionary!
Song Listing:

1. Every Moment- 2:15
2. Nourishment Nation- 2:41
3. Be Kind & Remind- 2:36
4. Seasick On Land- 2:24
5. Kicking The Heart Out- 4:15
6. Postage Stamp World- 3:19
7. Sewn Up- 3:09
8. Falcon Settles Me- 2:33
9. Endgame- 4:20
10. Endless Shovel- 4:47
11. Man-Revolutionary!- 2:03
12. Perfect- 2:01
Production Company: ©2004 Sub Pop Records

NOTE: I HIGHLY recommend that you do not look up the actual graphics of this album, or if you are familiar with the album, put the graphics out of your mind, as preconceived notions will make this assignment MORE difficult, not easier.

To start, download this template file for your CD graphics and save it in to your “lastname_final” folder. You will be creating your CD cover on this Photoshop file.

You will be creating the following for your CD graphics:
1. A nice typographic representation of the Group or Artist’s name, as well as a typographic representation of the title of the Album (these SHOULD NOT look the same!) Create these two graphics on separate files and copy them into your final project when needed. Please save these two files as .JPGs into your “lastname_final” folder.
2. Graphics for the front cover of the CD (and possibly continuing onto the back cover, as well) which fit the mood and theme of the Album. This is where much of your Graphic talent with Photoshop will come in. Use your blending, cutout and filter skills here! Feel free to get images from the Internet, as needed, to bring about your graphic. Remember, the Template is the outside border of your CD, do not go over it!
3. Text for the spine of the CD which includes the Group or Artist’s Name and the title of the CD.
4. Graphics for the back of the CD which follow a similar theme to the CD. On the back of the album, you will include the Song Listing AND Track Times.
5. Include the production company information on the back of the CD as well.
6. Place your Artist and CD Title graphics onto the cover of your CD as you see fit to enhance the look of the work.

When you have completed your design, please save the work as a .JPG file and place it into your “lastname_final” folder. Using “My Computer,” COPY your “lastname_final” folder to the class drop box on the M: Drive. (If necessary, see highlandtechnology.org FAQ page regarding this step)