Initial ideas and concepts

Initial ideas and concepts

To begin my design process I began to generate some concept ideas and try not make them too literal to the album name, thinking out of the box is the key so been too loose within the concept isn't a problem so long as it links back to the album somehow. 

I created mind maps to uncover words that may spark cool concepts. I looked into Jake Bugg's style, his musical influences and background, the lyrics of the song and further word association and word association derived form the albums name itself. From these starting points I began to diverse into other words that will spark many visual responses and keep away from a visual concept that is literal and obvious too the album name. I want it quite loose but not too loose were it loses relevance to the artist and his style and the album itself. 

Key words that will form visual concepts are displayed in the mind maps but the main concepts I thought up from these words are bellow:

Don Mcleans song on The Simpsons sparked Jakes love for the guitar. (Visualize the Simpsons somehow) 
Mythical creatures (Present a mythical creature although this may be too literal)
Retro colors and Physcodelic patterns (Derived from Strange Creatures>Abstract Artwork>Retro colors/Physcodelic patterns)
Urban scene (Skateboaring/Streets)
Rustic style (Wooden/Barn door has links with country wich links to his style of music)
Casual style (Harrington jackets)
Stripped back simplistic music
Use his guitar as a main visual point (Abstract or literal) 
Use the lyrics "Set me free" to inspire imagery (Trapped, Entwined)
Use the lyrics "strange" to inspire imagery (Irregular abstract artwork)
Use lyrics world & cold in a literal visual outcome.
Use the word "mountains" derived from cold lyric to inspire a visual. 
Play on the lyric "nightmare" through visualization of sleep & dreaming.
Create disturbing imagery inspired by the combination of lyrics "Haunting" & "Little Ghost Girl"
Create an abstract visualization of the word "memories" derived from the synonym of lyric "Haunting"  
Visualise the word "trapped" deriving from the lyric "Set me free" it makes me think of someone been trapped and wanting to get out.
Emulate his simple stripped back music in minimalism style graphic design.
Create images loosely inspired by the streets and urban culture. 
Think about physical creation of imagery in context of concept ideas, for example feeling of trapped could be actual image of something trapped.
I found a cool fan comment saying "That guitar sounds like an angel" it would be nice to visualize this. 
Create something out of sewn stitching maybe? Type might look cool like this, the idea of stitching comes from traditional country culture.
Create more abstract representations of "strange creatures" 
Display haunting in an abstract sense,  one idea is to display a single teddy bear with dark color schemes to simulate a haunting feel and the feeling of something been abandoned. The owner been the "little ghost girl" mentioned in the lyric. 

Interestingly this was one of my first sketches of the 30 I produced and proved to be one of the strongest, using the visual of a guitar string derived from Jakes favorite instrument I created an abstract image with the word "trapped" displayed in the negative space of the entangled strings. The visual concept of been trapped derives from the lyric "set me free".

This is a very lose concept and goes into Jakes bio more than anything, his love of music (especially guitar) was sparked by listening to Don Mcleans song on The Simpsons. So I tried to visualize The Simpsons in an abstract sense but one in which could be commonly denoted back to the recognition of the program. Instead of been literal and drawing homer I did the next best thing that links with him, donuts, I may try a duff beer can now I think of it, this would work a lot better with the typography "dream" dream deriving from lyrics word association "nightmare" which I flipped on its head. 

Aesthetically I love this design, it shows the strings off a guitar in a very abstract sense, they are very twisted this presents a visual of words "irregular" and "entwined" derived from the word association of the lyric "strange" and the word association "set me free".

Bellow is a quote that inspired one of my chosen 5 ideas. "That guitar sounds like an angel" this gave me perfect opportunity to visualize this quote.

I visualized it by displaying a commonly connoted halo wich links with angels, and to link in with the feeling off been "tangled" or "trapped" (derived from the lyric "set me free") I illustrated a guitar string (Jakes main instrument) winding around the halo. The design is also very minimal to emulate jakes stripped back simple style of music. An overall strong concept in my eyes.

This was inspired by the word "trapped" that derived from the lyric "set me free". The dots could represent Harrington buttons, a staple piece of Jakes clothing style. The red color represents the trapped button surrounded by a number of other buttons.  

Using the guitar string that keeps popping up in my design ideas I had an afterthought, creating a word out of the guitar string itself may be a good idea.

As it stands the above ideas are very rough and crude, I will be researching into illustration techniques and design layout inspiration to inspire more creative & original approaches to creating the visuals.