ijusi #27: LP Covers

The brief was to design an LP album cover for a fantasy band or a new interpretation of a classic LP cover from the 60s for the 27th issue of iJusi (the LP Vinyl Record issue). The iJusi publication encourages and promotes a visual language, rooted in an African tradition. We were thus encouraged to look at LP covers from the likes of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Elvis Presley.

I then went on the net and searched for LP covers which were controversial and tongue-in-cheek. I looked, specifically at covers which were banned at some point for being offensive or inappropriate. Alice Cooper’s ‘Love It to Death’ was banned because of the thumb which looks like or suggests a penis, sticking out of his zipper. I proposed to crop the image down so as to show just the thumb sticking out, but use the same elements as the original in terms of the black and white image with a strong spotlight.

This led me to explore Xhosa ritual circumcision. Looking at Die Antwoord’s ‘Evil Boy’ video, which challenges Xhosa cultural circumcision, and says “I don’t wanna be a man”, I found my concept. I was going to create a fantasy band, a group modern Xhosa guys who choose to rebel against their culture. I decided to name the band “The Mutinious Boys” and have the album cover be “I Don’t Wanna Be A Man”, with the cover imagery suggesting influence from The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” album aswell as the in-your-face solution of Alice Cooper’s album covers. I looked at other bands with covers which had sexual innuendo or sexual stereotypes, including Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground. This is my final design solution:

My LP cover design made the shortlist for the designs picked for the "Long Playing Album" issue (#27). 

http://www.ijusi.com/blog/2012/07/06/issue-27-the-long-playing-album-cover/

(screenshot from the above mentioned and addressed blog)

We then had to package our LP cover design into cd format. I designed a disc, and a double sided disc packaging, which included design elements which elaborated on my initial concept. 

Poetry Africa Campaign

Poetry Africa is a festival which tours around Africa and hosts poetry sessions, seminars, music, open mic sessions, book launches and the Durban SlamJam event. The festival features predominantly poets from South Africa and other African countries and it runs for seven days. The Centre for Creative Arts (CCA), which organises this festival, have been running it since 1997 and are now looking for a new graphic style, for the way they advertise their festival to the public, for 2012. Inspired by traditional Cubism portraits, and looking at the mask I had designed and presented, I drew this interpretation of a cubist mask from logic and imagination.

I then rendered my design onto large scale A1 street posters; a web banner (475 x 200 px); catalogue covers (155 x 297mm); A5 flyers; and T-shirts. 

Sequential Drawing of The Workshop Shopping Centre, Durban

The brief was to produce a graphic sequence or series in response to an aspect of Durban which conveys a sense of place, community and society.The Workshop is a double storey shopping centre which has a ‘backyard’ park area. In that park area is a whole community of vendors and small business operations. It intrigues me, walking through The Workshop and experiencing all this business diversity and studying the types of people that visit these stalls and make use of the facilities. It is a very loud, very busy part of town, that seems to function perfectly for the people who utilise the spaces to earn a living.

Amnesty International Campaign

Child mortality statistics are staggering. In the world’s poorest countries, over 30 000 children under the age of five die each day from preventable causes related to conditions of extreme poverty. Analysts say that often casualties could be prevented if basic sanitation were available. According to United Nations statistics, as many as 4 billion people (two thirds of global population) lack access to safe, clean water. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children and it creates an environment that is damaging to their development. Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5. 

People can’t actively work to fix a problem if they do not know a problem exists. Finding solutions for child poverty requires a society to tackle the social issues that allow child poverty to continue and hopefully eventually bring the world closer to ending child poverty.

My campaign is called "SHOUT! For those who don't have a voice". The concept is to make people aware that they can, infact help out by joining and donating to the Amnesty International non-profit Organisation.

BROCHURE

TSHIRT DESIGN AND BANNER

Design & Dissent: Feminism (one minute movie campaign)

The movie ended up being about how feminists still ‘practice’ racial discrimination amongst themselves, so I had to continue my campaign in a way which would compliment the movie but also extend the concept and make the message clear. Considering that I wanted to show that as it is, the movement of feminism is not ‘strong’ enough to be taken seriously because it has cracks in its foundations, I then based my concept around the call to action for feminists to unite.

My campaign concept was based on a piggy back of the existing American Feminism campaign, “This Is What Feminism Looks Like” . This was a very publised and generalised campaign which while calling for more members, also educated more people to the constitution of feminism of what they fight for. The campaign thrived more on social networks, where anybody could place a picture of themselves with the title “This Is What Feminism Looks Like” and just lime that, could be extending the message to more people. This was a very successful campaign.

Using this idea would fit perfectly into what I was trying to achieve as I was to illustrate that feminists need to unite. To cater to this, I would take pictures of the most random characters, and state that anybody can be a feminist, and one can never really tell, but all members should be accepted and not discriminated against. I planned to take pictures of both genders, all races, and from all kinds of cultural backgrounds; and have the strapline saying “This Is What Feminism Looks Like.”

PACKAGING:     CD COVER; POINT OF SALE STAND

VIRAL MARKETING:     POSTCARDS

VIRAL MARKETING:     POSTER PLACEMENT

Design & Dissent: Feminism (one minute movie)

The brief was to do a research presentation under the theme ‘Feminism’, and then produce a one minute long movie. As Feminism is a very broad theme, we decided to break it into sub-topics, i.e. racial inequality, gender inequality, for the sake of the movie and the campaign. 

After having compiled our research (above), we decided to produce the movie under the sub-topic "racial inequality". Our movie's tagline is "how can you seek equality without equality". Here is the final product. 

*cast: Sinazo Gwambe, Phila Mtetwa, Kate Wells, Athinia and Stella Jele

*group members: Nokuzola Mkhize, Bongumusa Gama, Mvelo Gwambe, Nzuzo Mtetwa, Moses Ntsume and Thabiso Molefe.