Khruangbin Submission

Khruangbin are a new three piece band that I discovered online looking for music. They have provided their fans with a brief called 'People Everywhere':

Dear Friends,

We want to collaborate with people everywhere who have found our music and want to be a part of our upcoming Record Store Day release, focused around the song 'People Everywhere'.

Below is a template for you to digitally or physically work on, to submit back to us. All submissions will be put onto a website about the project and selected works will be reproduced, die-cut, and distributed among our physical vinyl releases for Record Store Day.

Please work on the template at at least 100% and submit back to us in a high enough quality to reproduce it at 100% for a 12" record. Note: you will fill in the people; you can leave the spaces around the bodies blank. You may work with either template--the blank one or the one with the outline. And you may approach it however you like. Totally up to you. All that we ask is that you use 'People Everywhere' as a source of inspiration and put your signature on it somewhere.

I want to use this brief as an opportunity to practice graphic design and get my work into the world. 

This is the template that they provided:

The brief is very broad as it is only limited to the space provided. This leaves me with a lot of scope for idea generation. The template reflects the theme of 'People Everywhere' due to the figures holding hands in a circle.

When I began designing some initial concepts, I found the space inside the template limiting and I was confused as to where I could put the imagery as I think the brief is fairly vague. 

I used the natural line from the template, along with the slow tempo song, as inspiration for the green:

Using the pen tool on Illustrator allowed me to easily draw more contours around the outside of the figure. 

Added muted and pastel colours to the contours to emphasise the natural line. It reminds me of cells inside the body all coming together which is appropriate for the brief. I placed circles on the chest of every figure in order to create a consistent pattern. 

I decided to choose a vibrant colour scheme because I thought the past design was flat and muted:

Used a deep red and natural analogous colours around the outside because I thought it was complimenting. 

I also used some work that I was creating for a completely different project but I thought the textures and colours were more expressive than the previous two compositions. I wanted to express myself as the brief was ultimately very broad. 

When it came to submitting my designs, I created PDF's to attach to an email. However, I for the previous composition, the colours weren't set up correctly on Illustrator because the tones changed dramatically:

I didn't check this before sending so unfortunately they didn't get to see the actual result and instead they have a very vibrant outcome. 

This is a good learning experience for me and I will make sure that I double check the RGB and CMYK colour finishes, along with the final PDF before sending. 

I received an email back from the band to confirm they had received my designs:

It is a good feeling to put my work out there, even though it wasn't my best but I think it's important to gain experience on live briefs at this point so that in the near future I won't get problems like this again. I now have to wait to see if either of my designs are chosen for the album art or posters. 

It is a shame I discovered the brief so late because I would have benefitted from a bit more time to plan and design in order to get a more conceptual and visually striking outcome.