603 - Brief 05 - Secret 7 Brief Intro

Brief name : Secret 7

Time scale : 1-2 weeks (Deadline: 24th April)

Brief : Design a record cover for one of the seven tracks available. The tracks include:

• The Clash - I'm Not Down
• London Grammar - Help
• Eurythimics - I Saved The World Today
• Manic Street Preachers - No Surface All Feeling
• Priminal Scream - Damaged
• Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over
• Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made Of sand

I should aim to visually explore the artists and tracks, through the context of the secret 7 competition.

Background : Secret 7” takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then invite creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style for every 7”. 700 unique sleeves are exhibited before going on sale on a first come, first served basis priced at £50 each. You don’t know who created the sleeve, or even which song it’s for, until you have parted with your cash - the secret lies within.

Target audience : Firstly, the judges of the competition

                                Secondly, the general public who will be at the exhibition with the intentions of buying one of the sleeves.

Mandatory requirements : 

1. Your design must not include the artist’s name or the song title
2. Concentrate your design on what will be the front, only this will be visible in the exhibition
3. Dimensions should be 182 x 182mm + 3mm bleed on the top, bottom and right hand side. The bleed won’t be visible, so bear that in mind
4. Your file must be produced in CMYK so it’s set-up to be printed. Any PMS specials will be converted. Metallic or fluorescent inks cannot be reproduced
5. Your file must be 300dpi
6. Your file must be saved as either a Tiff, JPEG or PDF
7. Do try and reduce the size of your file as much as possible 10MB maximum
8. You can submit a sleeve design for as many of our tracks as you like, and more than one design for each track.

THE DEADLINE IS 24 APRIL 11:59PM GMT.

This year my approach to Secret 7 is going to be very illustrative based - upon visiting the exhibition last year it was clear to me how the predominant winners are producing illustration based work, so I thought it would definitely be appropriate for me to start pushing my style to see where it could lead me through this competition.

I wanted to try and produce something satirical and maybe even politically challenging - although I am not politically minded at all, I think I may be able to use this to my advantage and create something deliberately naive or shocking to stand out against the rest of the crowd. As you can see from above, the displayed artwork can easily get lost amongst all the other great art surrounding it, so I need to consider how I can make it stand out and that the main subject in my art is a good scale to be seen from atleast 5 feet away really.