BRIEF 10 - DR. ME - TALK AND WORKSHOP

DR.ME gave us an insight into how they work, where they have come from and what they do.

Notes from talk:

Find somewhere with things going on
- Work space is better than your bedroom

Don't pigeonhole yourself.

What do they do?

- Record Sleeves
- Posters
- Self Directed

- Focus on the handmade
- Tactile work

Music is a good place to start
- Creative freedom
- Quick turnaround 

Keep relationships up
- Don't lose contact

Hustle

Be smart & trust your gut

Force yourself to do something everyday

Look for inspiration from things around you

Don't go straight to the computer

Use the client as a colaborator

Name is important

Forget about being a student
- Make contacts
- Don't get too hung up on it

Project rate
- Ask client what their budget is 

After their talk, they set us three briefs to complete over the day. 

For the first two briefs we were paired off, like DR.ME had been at university, with the person next on the register. We were told to be brave with the work we were producing.

BRIEF 01_

Working with Joe Leadbeater, we initially listened to the mix and wrote down any words that we thought were appropriate.

Disjointed
Crackle
Scratch

Abstract

Whisper

Chime

Journey

Trees

Forrest

Voices

Lo-fi

Fractured

Drone

Motion

Gargle

Distorted

Primal

Radio

News report

Old

Void

Itchy

Organic

Eerie

Space

Extra terrestrial

Noise

Art

Foreign

Language

Interrupted

Emptiness

White noise

Conversation

Course

Sensual

Feeling

Touch

Announcement

Synthesizer

Analogue

Electronic

Encroaching

Beatless

Rewind

Nordik

Surreal

Soviet

Eastern European

Cold

With this list we chose the words that we thought best represented the music and sound of the mix.
The word we chose to take forward were:

Fractured
Space
Surreal
Soviet

And in terms of colours we decided on cold and organic colours, blues and greens.

At this point we began to independently research. I began by looking into what Duga-Three actually was and other Soviet inventions and architecture. We both looked into Russian Brutalist Architecture as we thought it reflected the music. 

I found an image of a very space age looking construction called the Buzludzha Monument. The image was very striking and something I wanted to include in the vinyl cover. 

To get more tactile imagery, we went to the library to find images to scan in and use. We found several books with some great images. We were looking for either industrial, organic, soviet or fractured images - using the words we had selected from listening to the music.

I found some beautiful photographs by photographer Naoya Hatakeyama, entitled Underground. These were images of sewage and dirty water but photographed in a way that made them appear space-like. 

Now that we had sourced a selection of images we independently started to create our own record sleeves. Using photoshop I changed and manipulated the photos, changing the hue and saturation, cutting bits away and layering. The first cover I produced I liked, however, I thought it needed more.

I was very set on using the image of the structure but I thought the background needed to be more intriguing and organic and there needed to be more distortion to reflect the music.

For my second and final sleeve, I changed the image of the background to a more organic one, which also gave it more colour. Once I was happy with this, I began changed the hue on one of the other images and layered it over the image. As I was deciding what to do with the layer and changing the size of it, the guys from DR.ME came round and told me that it looked great how it was so I decided to leave it there.

The image reflects the music in that it is fractured and disjointed through the layering, organic and space-like through the choice of colours and images and has tones of the Soviet technology and brutalist architecture through the image of the building. The sleeve also reflects a lot of the other words I wrote down whilst listening to the music:

Disjointed

Abstract

Whisper

Journey

Lo-fi

Fractured

Motion

Gargle

Distorted

Primal

Old

Void

Itchy

Organic

Eerie

Space

Extra terrestrial

Noise

Art

Foreign

Interrupted

Emptiness

Sensual

Feeling

Touch

Analogue

Surreal

BRIEF 02_

This brief was very loose, in that there was not a lot to go on. I initially approached this by listening to the music of the band and support acts, as well as looking at their existing artwork. 

I really liked the name ODONIS ODONIS and wanted to use this typographically. 

Due to the limited time for this brief, I worked through it extremely quickly. I sourced some images that I could possibly used. I had liked the photographs we used for the vinyl sleeve so much that I chose to use them again.

With my imagery chosen I set about sorting out the hierarchy and layout of the text that needed to be included.

I had originally decided to have the text as the positive layer, however, after some discussion with my peers, I decided to also produce a poster where the text was the negative. 

With both layouts produced I added the background and deleted the appropriate areas.
 

Having produce both the type as the positive and negative, I prefer the type as the negative. This also reflects the music better. 

BRIEF 03_

DR.ME are working on an ongoing self-directed project entitled 365 days of collage. The final brief set was a reflection on that. We were asked to produce a collage of anything we wanted, only being restricted by the dimensions. 

I wanted to produce something abstract using images of things I was interested in and liked. I chose a selection of images I could possibly use.

My original collage was very basic and only combined two layers. I selected areas I wanted removed from one image, removed them and arranged the other image below it so that certain elements came through the removed areas.

 After the session I continued to play around with collage using the same image, however, this time I used three layers to create a more visually interesting and abstract image.