Wk 12: Documentation & Presentation Process Book

Week 12 was spent documenting the elements of the project for my website and printed portfolio. After deciding all the parts of the project that I wanted to showcase I spent some valuable time in the photo room. 

After the small group crits on Monday I continued working on my process book for the presentation. I changed the text flow to be more comfortable, while adding more information on the transparency laying process and the early concept sketches. The screw-post construction allowed me to easily insert the new page, which was no longer printed on transparency to allow for easy reading. 

Process Book

Web Presence:
http://vanjumper.com/#item=blues-record-revival

Print Portfolio Spreads:

Wk 11: record labels, print testing, and the presentation

At the end of last week I ran my first cover to be test printed. The thick paper took the ink well and the type on the back came out clean but the black type for the artist name on the front was slightly dulled so color corrections were needed yet again. I also had to look into the method in which i score the edges for folding and how it relates to the grain of the paper. I spent the rest on the week working on the circular labels that appear on the vinyls themselves.

After getting the labels onto all five records I restarted over on the new final presentation book. The front cover will be a transparency with a large black area referring to a record. The next page which will also be a transparency will contain my process notes and hand drawn sketches. Here the reader will learn about my experiments and the rules I set. This second page will show through the white area of the front cover to bring the overlapping that i have been doing for the past 11 weeks to the very beginning of the book. Following this will be a plain sheet so the reader can actually read the process page and then all of my transparencies will be binder clipped to these initial pages.

Wk 10: Five Finished Front Covers

This week saw the competition of all the front covers with finalization of the T-Bone Walker and Robert Johnson album art. After the small group crit on Monday I was pushed to look further into the typographic treatment of the artist names. The old type stood out and dominated the imagery because of its bold weight and deep blackness. In response to this I picked a lighter, extended typeface and made it the back layer of the scans. This softened the blackness and made it appear more like it was part of the imagery. 

Wk 9: Howlin' Wolf, Back Cover, and Collection Logo

This week I went back to the first cover, Howlin' Wolf's self-titled album, that I had tried the transparency process on. I applied my technique/process of blind serendipitous overlaying that I developed in weeks 6 & 7. I also concretely defined some rule sets I had been playing with for these albums. The protagonist character must always appear in blue in the same location on each cover. Elements that are shared between songs must use the same image and color for each cover. For example, the words heart, rain, and sun are used in multiple songs. 

I also started to work on the back covers of the albums. I used this space to clarify the album titled since it had been brought up that the text was difficult to read on the front cover on some of the artifacts. I'm also using the back to give information on the artist and their historical significance. To bring this collection together and make them appear like a legitimate set of artifacts put out by a real entity I created I logo to apply to the back. The acronym BRR stand for "Blues Record Revival." BRR also references the feeling of the blues as a cold feeling, which is described as "a low-down shakin' chill" by Robert Johnson in Preaching Blues. 

To add further realism I created a method of creating serial numbers for the albums. The serial for Howlin' Wolf's album is V# HWC2.10325. The equation for this is V# + artist initials + C (for cover) + version.iteration + date as mm/dd.

3/5 albums done 

don't look at the quotation marks.
they have been fixed. :)

digital and with printed dot matrix

Wk 7: Presentation & Refinement

feedback from midterm crit

patrick: photographed on the light table? or scanned? the layering is more obvious maybe on the table. 

matthew: is the type printed? the images and your treatment are really refined, but your type feels a little like an afterthought.

patrick: does the vinyl cover have these layers, or is it reproduced flat?

abby: i'd love to see what happens when you project something.

lillie: is each image at a different opacity? play around with that… maybe not make an entire transparency the same opacity, like maybe the transparency could vary, like the crowd of people could be at different levels.

marty: if it's not in your final ruleset to use all 11 pieces, maybe use fewer.

patrick: have you ever experimented with transparent bases and screenprinting? multiplying ink instead of transparencies. or running it through the konica multiple times. 

marty: i think this is a really interesting process of formmaking. go back to the analog type of the dot book… try out different sizes and collages and changes. 

jw: colors? archetypal objects and colors?

collin: it's already pretty psychedelic, so watch out with the type… keeping it plain might speak to the blues roots more than doing too much, but try to balance for variety.

moving on
Moving on from this I started to look at my treatment of type in the next album cover with the intention of applying any new techniques to last weeks cover. The cover was created in the same way with overlaid transparencies but this week the type was also included. The artist name and album cover were split onto their own transparencies and given hierarchy. The artist name is quickly read but the lighter album name does not appear as suddenly.

process

death letter redone type

wk 6: process experimentation & printing fun

After picking out concepts last week for how to tell the stories, this week I focused on the process in which I plan to make these album covers. Specifically looking at how the transparencies look when overlaid and how to bring them from being black & white laser prints to colorized layers.

Down in the Bottom

For Down in the Bottom I printed off my elements in a wide variety of sizes and then created the collage by hand and taping the pieces down. After this I scanned the collage as a whole image and as the individual pieces. I colorized these pieces, printed them off on separate transparencies, and scanned them all together again. 

Death Letter Blues
Trying a similar process but with more serendipitous play I printed off my elements and then rescanned them back in at 800 dpi to get the dot matrix print pattern. I once again colorized these layers, but when I created the collage this time instead of knowing exactly where everything touched I placed the image in the frame and moved it till it felt "right" in the frame. After this I turn off the layer so I couldn't see it anymore and then repeated the process ten more times. I printed the layers off one by one and didn't see how the elements interacted until i overlaid the transparencies.

Wk5: Initial Analog Sketches and Collage Preparation

Initial Concept Sketches

This week began with initial sketches where for each song I produced 5 sketches. The first two sketches were straight collage, the third showed sequence using lines and numbering, and the fourth was set up like a math equation where the protagonist was added to the problem. The final sketches were complete geometric abstraction of subjects.

Moving on from the small group critique I will be using the first, third, and final sketch concepts to explore telling narrative. Also from the critique came the idea of creating collage that were more than just flat overlayed transparencies but were actually made in space and then photographed. I will be exploring both methods. 

sans color background

Collage Elements

While snowed in my house I prepped my collage elements, the images and lines, for the first album to be ready to print as soon as I get back to studio to hit the ground running!

Wk4: Image Kit Collection, Lyrics, And Initial Photoshop sketches

This week I transcribed the lyrics of the five chosen songs. Not surprisingly not a single lyric website had a perfectly transcribed song and thus required multiple listening and rewrites. Recordings of old slightly mumbling men from over fifty to sixty years ago aren't exactly crystal clear. 

After this I went through the songs and picked out nouns and ideas that I could visualize to tell the narrative and created a folder for each one. The next step was to start amassing my kit of imagery for each song. 

Starting to sketch in photoshop proved frivolous and my next step is to start analog sketching for each song. 

Lyrics Link Posted Separately to Save A Little Space

Lyrics

Image Kit

songs

Death Letter Blues

Down in the Bottom

I'm Alone Because I Love You

Preaching the Blues (Up Jumped the devil)

The Sun Went Down

Sample Images

"If you see me streakin' by, bring me my runnin' shoes"

It said, "Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead"

It said, "Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead"

It said, "Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead"

Initial Photoshop Sketches (Down in the Bottom)

bad, utterly bad

Friends