OUGD603 - Brief 05 - Secret 7" - Development

Inspired by the lyrics ‘hungry for your love, with no way to feed it’ One idea was to create a range of 90’s fast food packaging called ‘your love’ and hide easter eggs such as Buckley’s birthday in the design on places like the barcode. Other ideas surrounding these lyrics included a burger full of different love hearts of different sizes and materials and different imagery of pink burger boxes.

As the lyrics ‘It’s never over’ are repeated several times in the song another idea was to create a replica of love heart sweets with that phrase in the middle. The love heart sweet could then also be snapped in half to reflect the melancholy themes of the song. However, this idea seemed a bit kitsch and the aesthetic has been overdone.

In the above sketches are a range of other initial ideas which visually represent the song’s lyrics. Basing the cover on a single lyric may have caused the design to become too ambiguous to be used on the album’s cover. After visiting the show last year it was obvious that a lot of the winning entries had taken inspiration from the song’s title. Therefore that is the approach I decided to explore down next.  

The curators at Secret 7” have a good sense of humour and in 2016 a lot of the covers that stood out to me were very tongue in cheek. When listening to the song I considered what the modern day equivalent of saying ‘lover you should’ve come over’ would be and a funny version of this was ‘netflix and chill?’. Going completely against the melancholy nature of the song this cover is a more cheeky modern twist on the song’s title, creating a humorous concept on how theme of the song could have first come about.

As the song is set in the 90’s before the invention of Netflix, mobile phones or iMessage, the design must clearly be a parody on the song’s title and in no way reflect the era or contents of the song. The only similarities are of the overall situation - wishing his lover would have come over. This design is meant to be funny, outlining a text Jeff Buckley might have sent if the song was set in 2018. The time of the read receipt is the length of the song to add a small Easter egg to the design.

As the composition I had in mind was extremely simple and stripped back, experimenting with the style and colour scheme was crucial to create an interesting layout. The feedback I received was that if I was trying to make it as digital and realistic looking as possible then the elements needed to be realistic, without hand rendered illustrations or the use of different typefaces and effects. Therefore I used text and icons as similar to Apple’s as possible.

Whilst listening to the song I came across a photograph I had taken on a trip to Berlin of a pink bike that was tied up in the street and I felt it perfectly matched the melancholy nature of the song whilst simultaneously giving off vibes of New York’s east village area, where Buckley first garnered a following.

The tied up bike could symbolise his lover never leaving to ride over to his and the colour scheme of pink and black fitted with the night time setting ‘tonight you’re on my mind’, ‘where are you tonight?’, ‘My body turns and yearns for a sleep that won’t ever come’. The composition is also perfect for an album cover and the use of a disposable camera means the style matches the era of which the song was set.

After experimenting with a number of different effects including glitch artwork, duotone and collage I asked for feedback and everyone agreed the image was striking enough in itself to not need any additional filters. It looked way too overworked with the different effects and lost it’s original charm. Everyone agreed the composition was symbolic of the songs title and it was a good fit for the cover.

Final Designs

The final designs can be seen on my design boards. I'm not sharing them online as one of the rules of secret 7" is that the final design must not be posted online incase your submission is chosen for the exhibition, as it's a secret.