File: M04-01
Two versions of an album art that I created, ten years apart.
What is this about?
This was a graphic design project I did back in 2012 (left side) and recently in 2022 (right side).
In 2012, the project was to create an album art, print it, cut it out, and fit it in a blank CD jewel case. The purpose of this was to take it with me when attending an interview, for example a job interview, and showcase my skills and experience. It goes with my portfolio displaying examples of my graphic design works.
When my teenager kids were attending secondary school, I did manage to apply for an adult course in graphic design at a college, in the hope of refreshing my skills, and getting better qualifications to replace my outdated ones. When attending an interview, I showed this CD album art to the interviewer, whom was impressed.
The woman seen in the album art is not a model, she is a very close personal long-time friend of mine, herself a single mother, and she posed for me as a favour.
The train, seen in the background, was an old steam train at one of those heritage railway stations in the United Kingdom. The photographs of my friend posing at the railway station was taken with a Nikon D200 around February 2012.
About the artist and album title.
Lisa Jones is the name of a fictional character. When doing graphic design projects, like designing a CD album case cover, music video cover, tour poster, t-shirt, or magazine article layout, of a solo female artist, I use this fictional character in my designs.
The fictional Lisa Jones could be described as singer-songwriter, guitar player, her genres are rock, alternative rock, and that she could be kind of similar to Sharleen Spiteri or Sheryl Crow.
The album title The Mystery Lady At The Station, is a made up title. As I mentioned above, the woman in the photo is a close friend whom did a favour for me, not a booked model. She doesn’t mind if I created a graphic design work using the photo of her, as long as she is not clearly seen. So when I thought to do a cropped version, I realised the image makes her look like a mystery woman, and decided to give it a title based on this.
The track titles are actually sort of like a diary or journal, done in a bullet point style, and serves as reminder for me, to remember events I did in my life.
The top row shows the front page of the inlay card, which is the main album art cover for the front of the jewel case. The bottom row shows the back of the jewel cases.
On the left side.
This was done in 2012 using CorelDRAW 10 on my older computer running on Windows 98.
During 1987 to 89, I attended a college course, studying traditional graphic design, which means using pencils, pens, paints, craft knife and masking tapes, because at that time, the college did not have enough computers for all students.
Years later, in 1995, I got myself a Windows 3.1 computer, mainly for using word processor, but realised that at that time, more and more companies are switching from old fashion traditional graphic design to digital way done on computers. I figured it would make sense if I buy myself a graphic design software and install it on my computer, then self-teach myself in digital art.
So, I bought CorelDRAW 3, few years later I upgraded my computer to a new model with Windows 98. After that, I upgraded from Version 3 to 4, and then to 10.
Here is how I did it: I imported two photographs of my friend into Corel Photo-Paint, and used its range of filters to try to turn the photos into some kind of art-like images, like a watercolour painting or similar, then saved them as JPEG format images.
After that, I imported the JPEG images into CorelDRAW’s vector software, and created the inlay card and back cover. The tickets on the front cover, and the fictional company logo on the back cover, were modified from pre-prepared Clipart images that came on the CD-ROM.
Then simply print them out, cut them out, and install them into a jewel case.
On the right side.
This was done in 2022, this time using Adobe Creative Cloud software, on my current computer running on Windows 7 Professional Edition.
In the summer of 2015, I custom built my new computer with Windows 7 Professional Edition, in 64-bit mode. Sadly that mean some of the older software including CorelDRAW could not be installed on my new machine, as they were programmed for 32-bit and were incomparable.
So I switched to Adobe software. I’m aware that many photographers use Adobe Lightroom only, while many prefer Adobe Photoshop only, and some prefer both of them. However as I not only just do photography, but also do graphic design, I opt for the “All Apps” package, which includes InDesign and Illustrator, as well as Lightroom and Photoshop.
Because I was unable to install my old CorelDRAW 10 software on my Windows 7 machine, I hoped to open the original .CDR format files in Illustrator, and try to convert into .AI format file. Unfortunately there were some problems with the designs, like missing fonts, photos showing outside the lines, stuff like that. It would request some major changes to make them workable.
So I decided to start afresh.
Here’s how I did it: First, I imported the photos into Photoshop, and saved them as .PSD format files, instead of exporting them as .JPEG files. I used Photoshop’s filters to change the looks, and saved them.
For the inlay card to be installed in the front cover of the jewel case, I used Adobe InDesign. Because the inlay card is often created as a booklet, InDesign is better suited for this. I imported the .PSD file into InDesign, and if it does not look right, I would make changes to the .PSD file in Photoshop then save them. The InDesign file can be automatically updated with the changes.
For the back cover, I used Adobe Illustrator instead, and like as above, I imported the .PSD file into Illustrator, then create the rest of the details such as track titles, copyright notices, fictional company logo, etc. As with InDesign, if the .PSD image does not look right, I can make changes in Photoshop, save it, and Illustrator will automatically update with the new look.
Conclusion.
So that is why I have two versions of same album art. One was created in 2012 using CorelDRAW on older 32-bit operating system, and the other was redone in 2022 with Adobe software, on 64-bit Windows.
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