Graphic Design
Spring Semester 2020
Final Examination

FINAL FOR Alejandro Castillo

Instructions: Please read all of the following information carefully:

Create a new folder on your network space, 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, such as the UNITY/EMPHASIS assignments.

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: Jazz
Artist: John Coltrane
Album Title: "A Love Supreme"
Short Review:

"A Love Supreme" is a suite about redemption, a work of pure spirit and song, that encapsulates all the struggles and aspirations of the 1960s. Following hard on the heels of the lyrical, swinging Crescent, "A Love Supreme" heralded Coltrane's search for spiritual and musical freedom, as expressed through polyrhythms, modalities, and purely vertical forms that seemed strange to some jazz purists, but which captivated more adventurous listeners such as rock fellow travelers like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, and the Byrds.

From the urgent speech-like timbre of his tenor, to the serpentine textures and earthy groove of Elvin Jones's drumming, Coltrane's suite proceeds with escalating intensity, conveying a hard-fought wisdom and a beckoning serenity in the prayer-like drones of "Psalm," where Jones rolls and rumbles like thunder as Garrison and Tyner toll away suggestively--all the while Coltrane searches for that one climactic note worthy of the love he wants to share.
Sound clips from your album:

-Clip #1: Part II- Resolution

-Clip #2: Part IV- Psalm
Song Listing:

1. A Love Supreme Part I: Acknowledgement
2. A Love Supreme Part II - Resolution
3. A Love Supreme, Part III: Pursuance
4. A Love Supreme, Part IV-Psalm
Production Company: ©1964, Impulse Records

PLEASE SAVE EARLY AND OFTEN!

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. 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!
  2. Text for the spine of the CD which includes the Group or Artist’s Name and the title of the CD.
  3. 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. Please put these in a PLEASING AND ARTISTIC manner! DO NOT SIMPLY copy and paste these words across the back of your CD cover, DESIGN THEM!
  4. Include the production company information on the back of the CD as well.
  5. 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 and place them onto your CD TEMPLATE canvas.

When you have completed your design, please save the work as a .JPG file and place it into your “lastname_final” folder in your NETWORK DRIVE. THEN EMAIL YOUR COMPLETED JPG FILE TO pburkhard@weldre9.org.