Category: design

Crappy Album Covers — Sidebar: CACs brought to life

A while back, I poked fun at a an album cover by Sterling Blythe, called Sterling Blythe Sings (CAC #47).

Mark Portillo, keeper of the blog called Drop Me Off In Harlem, started a concept where simple animation to familiar, and not-so-familiar album covers could bring out many salient features, or poke fun of drawbacks, of the album cover.

In the original cover, Blythe sat on what appeared to be a tree branch. But since the branch didn’t seem to be connected to anything, it looked like he was floating. Now, thanks to the magic of animated GIFs and a bit of retouching, he really is floating.
Appearing in early April will be this 1969 album cover from King Crimson, entitled “In The Court of the Crimson King”.

Well, not exactly this cover. This is another one of Mike Portillo’s handiworks, exaggerating the already-exaggerated madness of the cover through the magic of animation.

 

Visits: 198

A Do-It-Yourself Indie Band Album Cover

  1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”, or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. Or alternatively, pick a band name using the band name generator and word of your liking at bandnamemaker.com (my preferred method). Warning: to my knowledge neither method will generate a band name such as “Jesus of Kapuskasing”. That name was pure invention. Jesus is, well, Jesus; and Kapuskasing (pronounced cap-us-KAY-sing) is a small town in northern Ontario. I used it because “Jesus of Montreal” was already taken (it is the title of an independent film). Wikipedia has that title.
  2. Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. In both cases above, I used the Wikipedia titles from rule #1 to title the album.
  3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days.  The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. I threw less caution to the wind and looked a little harder.
  4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. Make sure it’s a square. 500 x 500 pixels is ideal. I require a square image too, but I do not have “ideal” limits. Whatever the size, it ends up on my blog as 300 x 300.

Visits: 123

How to Make Your Own Indie Band Album Cover

  1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”, or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. Or alternatively, pick a band name using the band name generator and word of your liking at bandnamemaker.com (my preferred method). Warning: to my knowledge neither method will generate a band name such as “Jesus of Kapuskasing”. That name was pure invention. Jesus is, well, Jesus; and Kapuskasing (pronounced cap-us-KAY-sing) is a small town in northern Ontario. I used it because “Jesus of Montreal” was already taken (it is the title of an independent film). Wikipedia has that title.
  2. Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. In both cases above, I used the Wikipedia titles from rule #1 to title the album.
  3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. I threw less caution to the wind and looked a little harder.
  4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. Make sure it’s a square. 500 x 500 pixels is ideal. I require a square image too, but I do not have “ideal” limits. Whatever the size, it ends up on my blog as 300 x 300.

Visits: 129

Four Ugly Colours (or, colours not found in nature)

There is a certain set of colour values somewhere in the visible spectrum that do not seem to have a category. These colours seem to go with nothing in your house, and do not seem to come from anything in nature.

The commonest of the ugly colours appear to be (by their RGB values — it seems to look different on different monitors):

149 255 183 industrial green 180 233 255 industrial blue

The colours of the “industrial” spectrum are most often found in factories and warehouses. The really good paint was probably left for head office. The colors also appear most often in low-rent housing and greasy-spoon restaurants.

226 255 187 puke green

A colour favoured mostly by people suffering from red-green colour blindness. Often mistaken for “moss green”. Consists mostly of canary yellow with just enough green to make you think the canary was unlucky. Associated with festering sores and infectious disease.

255 205 245 hospital pink

For similar reasons, industrial blue is also called “hospital blue”. Associated with strerility. People who decorate their homes in hospital pink or hospital blue favour what is called in interior design as the “anaesthetic aesthetic”. Enjoyed most often by people under anaesthesia.

Visits: 288