Sketches: My Magic Carpet Of Films

I prefer to put pen to paper for my design concepts, before I sit down in front of my computer. There are virtually endless possibilities in digital design — but I find it helpful to focus a bit, narrow down my ideas, and sort of block out the shapes and forms, to avoid spending too much time wandering off down dead ends. I suppose this a habit that remains from having spent time in the world before digital design, where waxed galleys of type and photostats of images were pasted up on ruled boards over a light table, and it all seemed so much more labor-intensive, somehow.

Sometimes, I'll go into the process with a very clear and well-defined idea of what I want to do. Here's a sketch I started with on Sunday...

You probably won't be able to read the notes I've scribbled on the side — those are the colors I wanted to use (red, brown, gold, black, yellow), for the sort of flavor I felt the cover should have. This was the end result, several hours later...

It wasn't exactly as I had planned (I really didn't have any real concept of the back cover, so I went off in a different direction, and I chose slightly different photos for the front) but the structure and color treatment remain more or less the same.

(By the way, that "FPO" over the UPC code is short for For Position Only, as the information in that box was placed there temporarily.)