Above is the brief I chose to do Amy Winehouse and straight away I wanted to give myself a specific song so I could do research into that right away rather than faffing around trying to decided what aspect to do. The next thing I did was to research into Amy Winehouse as a whole and also into Back to Black which is the specific song I chose to do my project on.
- Amy was born on the 14th of September, 1983
- 4m albums were sold when she was alive and a further 2m were sold after her death.
- She wrote ‘Rehab’ in 6 hours after a joking discussion with Mark Ronson.
- Carole King’s ‘So Far Away’was her favourite song, and her family and friends sang the song as a tribute at her funeral.
- She won 5 grammy awards
- Amy self-harmed and overdosed after her parents’ separation.
- She used drugs and alcohol for the majority of her life. She tried to get clean and sober many times. One of these times were the 13 days leading upto her death. Her father suspected that the detoxing had killed her.
- Tattoos: - Razor blade over her heart with ‘Blake’ written above it - A native American - ‘Daddy’s Girl’ - Horseshoe - Her Grandmother Cynthia - Anchor ‘Hello Sailor’ - Lightning bolt (“like me, lightning’s a natural disaster”).
- Amy died with her laptop beside her, she was watching YouTube videos of herself all night.
I also decided to watch some short documentrys featuring amy winehouse :
I then also scanned throught the 'AMY' documnetary which is one of my favourite films as I think it portrays her life so well and is an amazing tribute to her life. I took some screenshots of this below:
I took these at ranging times from the documentary where you can see the change throughout. Back to black is all about Amy going back to drink / drugs. Black is another term comonly used for heroin.
Above was my quick ideas for my designs I then created that day. I decided to go along the lines of the song and as if Amy was going back to heroin, I looked at that in the sense that if she was going back to all that stuff she might be spiralising out of control again. As when you have an addiction it is hard to stop and can be easy to go back to. I wanted to show this yet portray her strength as in the documentary you see all the aspects of fame that you usually do not see and I think she was a very strong woman to go through that. I found a picture that I thought best represented her strength and image as a whole with the lip piercing heavy eyeliner and beehive :
Below you can see my progression from start about the concept of spiralising inwards which is similar to the metaphor of Amy going back to black (heroin) :
I originally started with the square shape to go along with the 27 x 27 sort of vibe but the first one was the only one in the opionions of my peers that actaully looked like my concept. Because of this I changed the spiralising shape to a circle. I thought this made the overall look less harsh which I loved. At this point I realised that I am really enjoying this brief even though it is one day and I thought I would be rushed to complete an outcome that I might not be prouf of, however I am loving the look of minamalism with the strong concept of my designs.
The type here is inspired by the type that was made by Amy's friend for her. In these experimentations I was looking at spiralisation but also where the circles landed on her face. I thought it was quite an interesting factor that even though the face was covered in some areas it was still so recognisable who it was as Amy was such a well known artist all over the world. This reminded me of Barnbrooks cover for Bowie 'The Next Day' -
This was such a fantastic piece of design by Barnbrook and I think it is very relevant as Bowie was also such a well known amazing artist. Because the circles were blanking out some of Amy's face I thought it could be interesting to play around with also blanking out some of the type, as she was such a public figure I think you don't necesarily need the type however I think it works well in this context. My final two designs that I wanted to have a crit for to chose my final one were -
I chose these two as they were blanking out different parts of her face to see which worked better. I took these two images to a crit and recieved this feedback :
- great overall concept
- simple and effective however the one with more circles (right) is better as it portrays the spirals better the other one just looks a bit like a fat ring
- the one where you can see the eyeliner is more effective as you see all of amy winehouses main aspects that everyone knows
Because of this feedback I recieved I chose to go with the later design -
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