OUGD503 SB1 - Secret 7" - Brief & Initial Thoughts

Two of the smaller live brief projects that I will participate in for this responsive module are Secret 7" briefs. Secret 7" are an organisation that put on a live brief competition every year in which they collaborate with seven different artist and more specifically a certain single by that artist. The content of the brief is to choose one of the seven staple songs allocated by Secret 7" and then for the song we are to design the album cover in which would be used for 7" vinyl release of the single. The Secret 7" organisation brief is then chosen by a panel of judges and the selected winning designs will be printed on to an actual 7" vinyl and these will be then sold for £50 each will all donations and money made going to charity causes, and this year the chosen charity is Amnesty International. This charitable side to the brief is something of which may be important to take in to context during the design stage.

The main conceptual idea that surrounds this whole brief and its links to the organisation itself "Secret 7" is that the prospective designs that we are submitting ad a digital answer of the brief must not include the artist or song name and this will all be kept as a secret. This opens up a major consideration during the brief as without the ability to use the artists name or the name of the song on the actual album cover it means that the message and context that surrounds the meanings of the song must be displayed through imagery alone and so this gives me the chance to develop my skills in how I convey messages through image and the whole contextual side to my practice as a graphic designer.

The first time that I tackled this brief was a year ago while in Level Four, even though I really enjoyed completing the brief due to the fact that I am massively interested in the world of music industry related graphic design I didn't really enjoy the module too much as the outcome that I produced wasn't up to the standard that I thought it could be at but I understand that this was early on in my learning curve as a designers and I have come on leaps and bounds with my design since that point and so to see how I can attempt the brief now after everything I have learnt since I last attempted it can make a change in how the quality of the outcomes can develop as well.

Finally due to the fact that I know how long this brief took to answer last year and that it wasn't actually very long I wanted to experiment with the briefs this year in relation to my time management process and how it is linked to a brief and so therefore I will be doing this by answering the Secret 7" brief for two of the possible artist and song choices, completing one in a two day timescale and the second in a one week timescale. I would like to experiment with this as I believe that it will give me an insight in to my process as a designer and the difference that come out of two identical briefs when set to two different time limitations and to help me with my time-management skills.

The seven possibilities of songs that can be design for are;

Chvrches - Clearest Blue
Etta James - At Last
Jack Garratt - Worry
The Jam - Art School
John Lennon - Imagine
Max Richter - Dream 3
Tame Impala - The Less I Know The Better