Playlist Cover Design Project
Fall semester 2019
For this assignment, I was given the task to design both the front and back cover of the playlist I created on Spotify. I was required to print the design out and craft it into an actual record cover. I started by gathering songs and create a playlist of one theme. My design was inspired by the Japanese cartoon by the famous animator, hayao miyazaki, that I watched when I was a child. These cartoons have lots of joyous and peaceful soundtracks that can bring people into the world of that cartoon. As a result, a playlist of Japanese cartoon soundtracks and joyous instrumental music are being created, and there is a total of 12 songs. I decided to create a design that connects both the front and the back of the cover, therefore I needed to design the front and back covers at the same time. In my design, I wanted to create a magical world where the children are living with their favorite cartoon characters. A scene of a child fishing on a boat on the lake, and the cartoon characters appear all over the places around him, came to my mind. In order to make the front cover connected to the back, I made the fishing rod extended to the back, and to make it more magical, I made the boat a paper boat.
In my design, both worlds of under and above the lake are being shown. I add a lot of characters for both worlds, for example, behind the forest and mountains in the distance, sitting on the boat with the child, flying in the sky. Under the lake, there are underwater characters such as the little goldfish girl, Ponyo, and the red turtle. I tried to make these characters more interactive with each other, we can see Ponyo is trying to save the black dust ball who was caught by the fishing rod.
The hardest part was the assembly part. Before I craft it, I need to fold the folding parts, such as the spine, and the gluing parts. The printing papers were very thick and big because the physical cover we were making is the same size of an actual record cover. The crafting must be very careful, so I don’t cut the design, as well as the gluing. To glue the front and the back together, I first line up spine, make sure the fishing rod connects together, then carefully glued the front cover to the back. The I glued the top and bottom, this was difficult because they must be conduct at the same time. By doing this project, I learned that in order to make the designs on one object attractive, it is important to give all parts of the design some sort of connection to one another, thereby making the designs consistent.
