CD-13

Instructions: Please read all of the following information carefully:

Create a new folder on your “My Documents on daisy” student folder, call it “lastname_CD.” All of the work for this CD 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_CD folder. Open this file in Photoshop.

This CD 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 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: Porcupine Tree
Album Title: "Fear of a Blank Planet"
Short Review:

Sound: There is music. And there's music with substance. Music which, from feeling to feeling, touches our soul, even for a glimpse. Music to be loved. Art. How many artists can we say, 18 years later, to have sensibility to build, one after another, true odes to Human Feeling. And so, this is no immediate music. This can only fully be understood by a focused commitment, a strong and willed desire to understand, to seek for the inconspicuous beauty on it. The album is one of the most cohesive and intense albums Porcupine Tree have ever made, flowing, from piece to piece, to a glorious 50 minute journey of self consciousness and liberation. 10 year-old kid. “The pills that I've been taking confuse me”. Pills for emptiness. Futility. Ephemeral. All the drugs that seem to take out the humanity in us, which make we forgot that the most beautiful is not what is seen, but indeed what it is felt. And in this way the title track flows, an energetic and blasting convincing rock opener, resembling the mood of “Deadwing” track: anger-climax-peace, with some psychedelic piano paintings in the middle. But the album then evolutes to a different kind of feeling, different from the overall nostalgic, sad, quasi-romantic feeling of it's predecessor. Strings put “My Ashes”, a sweet quasi-acoustic layered track, to an ethereal level, elevated by the kid's comprehension that part of him is empty “And my ashes find a way beyond the fog, and return to save the child that I forgot.” And then the album flows into it's art peak. All the subtle feeling, all the utterly blistering sonic rock power blended in one song. Anesthetize. Memorable refrains, impressive riffs (with some touch of post-metal), disturbing soundscapes, mind blowing rhythms, splendid cascades of celestial backing vocals and even ethereal zen moments, all together fueled by some precious moments like “You were stolen, there's black across the Sun.” It ends. Terrifying, only 17 minutes? Next one, Sentimental. Sentimental is the moment to cry. All the emotions evoked until now explode in the piano-laid dreamy guitar tone of the track: “I've wasted my life, I'm hurting inside.” No excesses or dramas, just feeling as the way it is. Time to recover is not encountered on “Way Out of Here”, another moving track, with some anger explosions, leaded by it's disturbing soundscapes, marking bass lines and with the delicious original guitar solo. And then it comes the last track, “Sleep Together”. Class. The band had reinvented themselves again. They did what it seemed impossible. To fuse perfectly the most bizarre and psychic electronic industrial a la Nine Inch Nails with the most majestic symphonic arrangements. The album ends in a cathartic explosion of strings. We're literally disintegrated in particles, voyaging through the cosmos infinitude. “Let's leave forever”. Leave forever. Forever from this, many times, inhuman place we call Earth.

Lyrics and Singing: Lyrics are very down-to-earth, different from the poetic disposal of "In Absentia" ones. We have to see them as a kid's perspective of its own ego. They have to be seen as a flowing story in order to be understood. Still, heartbreaking in some moments, as I mentioned.

Impression: When the album ends we're shocked. We want more. And then we put the album from the beginning. Feel, cry and leave again. Like we were in an intense and beautiful dream. The dream of escaping from this blank society, in which we assist growingly to the terrifying indifference of pointing a gun, of causing suffering, of killing. Lives guided by destruction. This album is the manifest against the emptiness that plagues the humanity. Steven Wilson has the power to touch people. Every single album of the band has it's own feeling. I still can't resume what I feel in this album. But it feels a lot.

Sound clips from your album:

-Clip #1: Fear of a Blank Planet

-Clip #2: Way Out of Here

Song Listing:

1. Fear of a Blank Planet
2. My Ashes
3. Anesthetize
4. Sentimental
5. Way Out of Here
6. Sleep Together

Production Company: ©2007, Porcupine Tree 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_CD” 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 CD project when needed. Please save these two files as .JPGs into your “lastname_CD” 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.
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_CD” folder. Using “My Computer,” COPY your “lastname_CD” folder to the class drop box on the M: Drive. (If necessary, see highlandtechnology.org FAQ page regarding this step)