Design Criticism (Legitimately Tear Me A New Orifice)

[Stylo]

So, usually I'm part of a band but recently for my own amusement (to stave off the harsh boredoms of being off Uni until September and when I'm not gigging) I've started work on a solo album.

It's acoustic covers of songs I've always wanted to cover / have covered live in the past.

So anyway, this is a preliminary design for the cover and I want you to honestly tell me what you think is good / shit about it. Font, colour scheme, what the hell it's supposed to be even, all of that.

So here it is, anyhoo:

I will take comments on board and possibly make changes based on them.

Oh and so you know, that title isn't definite yet...

Fire away. Constructive crit appreciated. *Thumbs*

 

[Acepilotf14]

Move 'Songs' to the second line. Trust me.

 

[Escaep]

There are some spacing issues, specifically between the top of the circle and the bottom of S.t.y.l.o and the space at the bottom between None of these songs are mine and the bottom of the circle. Feels a little squished too, would increase the space between objects some more.

 

[Zephos]

That pink colour has to go, it's burning my retinas.

 

[MJ12]

In terms of layout-

1. Get rid of the font you used. Since you are not familiar with design and layout, it is safer to stick with traditional font types. Use Helvetica or arial if you want a san-serif font. Use Adobe Caslon or Garamond if you want a Serif Font.

2. Never have text touching something. That creates bad tension. "Stylo" is touching the planet.

3. Always line up your text with something. Don't randomly place text.

Here is a quick template example I did in illustrator. See how the title lines up at the start of "S" and the end of "O"

 

[Vegeta897]

What ZT said, and the colors are awful. The purple at least.

And that embossing effect needs to go. Just screams bad photoshop effect.

 

[Krynn72]

ZT posted excellent layout tips, so I'll focus on the artistic aspect. Drop all of the bevel/emboss filters (sign of a photoshop newbie), and the craquelure filter (sign of an ultra mega double probation photoshop newbie). Change the background to another neutral tone to fit with the circle design's color scheme. Probably some shade of brown or a very desaturated orange. If you want to have some texture to it, use a photo source. Find a good texture image, turn it black and white, maybe adjust the levels a bit, then multiply it over the whole image with a low opacity. Make sure its a fine, and subtle texture, with no huge distracting parts. Then make the text a dark color (not pure black). Then repost so I can have another look.

A good site for texture images is http://www.cgtextures.com/. Not all of them are very applicable for what you're doing (2D stuff) but many of them of them are.

 

[Unfocused]

What I wanted to say has already been said, except for this:

The inside of the circle looks like a bacon&cheese burger. Is it meant to be something specific?

 

[Vegeta897]

Looks like a planet to me.

 

[Mr. Djees]

Jupiter

 

[Stylo]

It is indeed Jupiter.

Okey doke, thanks for the advice / critique guys (especially ZT for the template).

I shall get to work. The spacing issues, I did think myself.

Any suggestions for an alternate colour if we all hate the current?

EDIT: Sorry, I missed Krynn's suggestion, will post next version with that.

 

[Stylo]

Sorry for the double post but here's the update:

I kept one with white font and one with darker (as per Krynn) for comparison.

Thoughts / feelings / strong emotions?

 

[lord_raken]

Much better. I like the darker text as well.

 

[Stylo]

I don't know what I was doing with the original. It was 1:40am, I had lack of sleep and I think at the time I thought I was being edgy with the purple but on reflection, it does look like a bad acid trip.

As for the craquelure, I don't have much experience with textures so I guess this is a learning curve for me. I usually go for David Carson inspired things when I do stuff like this but I tried something a little different.

You guys have been massive help though, so ta for that. Looks 1000% better than the preliminary idea.

 

[Krynn72]

Quite an improvement for sure. The thing with textures is that usually they're meant to kind of tie everything together. The way you have it now, with the texture on the planet but not the background does the opposite and separates them in a jarring and confusing way. In addition, the texture is scaled too large and needs to have smaller details so the cracks and such aren't over powering. Really, the finer and less immediately noticeable the details are, the better. The new color is pretty good, I think the text could go a hair darker, and I think you should change the color of the text to be like a deep redish-brown instead of grey.

 

[Stylo]

Something like this? :

 

[Vegeta897]

I say just get rid of that texturing altogether. Make it nice and clean, simple.

I also liked the white text better.

 

[Stylo]

This is how it looks with zero texture and the font in white:

 

[morgs]

Extreme Makeover: Album cover edition.

But seriously that latest one looks pretty good.

 

[Vegeta897]

Hmmm..

Just an idea.

 

[MJ12]

A very subtle centered gradient might not be bad. Have the center be the lighter, existing background color that you have now (to draw attention to the title and planet), and have the second color moving out from the center be a slightly darker version of the background color (but not black) Pull the opacity down on the darker color so it is a subtle effect.

Also, normally I'd tell you not to center everything, but that's a whole other lesson.

 

[Krynn72]

I think some kind of texture is good. I'd just use a low opacity paper one. Since we're doing mockups now, I'll do one too. I'm still not sold on white text, but I do actually like it better than the dark text.

 

[morgs]

That texture without the border on the planet would probably look great.

 

[Ennui]

find a better font mannnn

 

[Barnz]

 

[Ennui]

yes that is totally 100% exactly what i meant. the only possible improvement is papyrus!

 

[Raziaar]

Thanks.

 

[Stylo]

Okay, so I think we've boiled it down from the obvious awfulness to individual preferences.

I've decided I liked Vegeta's idea of taking the border from around Mr. Jupiter but I still like the idea of having texture so I had a look at doing a subtle, low opacity paper one like Krynn did.

I also have a personal preference for the white font so I think I'm gonna go with that too, though the dark one did look good. I wasn't massively keen on the gradient effect, though it was subtle, I think the simplicity of the solid colours works pretty well.

Probably going to settle on something like this:

Still up for tweaking but I'm pretty pleased with that.

- Subtle paper texture
- No border on Jupiter
- White font

Cheers for all the suggestions / tips on bringing the whole thing together. Been a huge help and also stuff I'll remember for the future.