OUGD406 Design Practice 1 - Design is About Doing - Secret 7

I have chosen the song 'grounds for divorce' by Elbow as I believe the song is rich in conceptual interpretations.

The lyrics.

I thought it best to understand the metaphors and context of the lyrics to aid my visual response.
I gathered several comments found on online forums to do so.

Guy Garvey's father gave the nickname 'The Seldom seen kid' to Bryan Glancy.

A quote from the lead singer Guy Garvey in an interview explaining the lyrics ' There's a hole in my neighbourhood'.

Byan Glancy was a childhood friend of Guy Garvey.

Bryan Glancy died 'suddenly' in 2006.

A simple search of 'Grounds for divorce'  resulted into me looking at a government document stating the five grounds for divorce, this could create an interesting interpretation of the song.

A map showing the location of the Temple Bar in Manchester in which the song refers.

The Temple Bar was converted from a victorian public toilet.

Frontman Guy Garvey (From Uncut magazine February 2008): 

"'Grounds For Divorce' was written when I was in a unhappy relationship. The words tumbled onto the page before I'd considered their meaning: 'I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds For Divorce.' It relates to the relationship I was in, but it's also a light-hearted look at the aftermath of losing my friend (singer songwriter Bryan Clancy who died in 2006), about wanting to get out of my beloved Manchester. I wanted to live somewhere else, just because of how heavy it got round here."

This interview cleared the meaning of some of lyrics behind the song, I dont want to create imagery that is based on my interpretation of the song, the real meaning of the lyrics must be communicated.

I created a mind map with ideas of imagery to use and concept.

 I studied the lyrics and considered the concept of the song:

I created 40 initial thumbnails, I had never created this many before.
This created one of the best starts to a brief I had ever had.
This many Ideas helped greatly, I could even merge two or more together to create a stronger concept.

 Here are the design sheets I used for the critique with Kevin from Secret 7" with annotations for each concept:

After noticing the pen Kevin was using I figured that was his feedback for my work,
fairly illegible but I deducted this from it:
'Lots of nice concepts. I like looking at coordinates and government doc.
Nice + different approaches to others I've seen for this track.'
I was very happy with this.

 The majority was definitely in favour of the wine stain ring idea, other suggestions were made for the ideas to stay away from and existing record covers with strong concepts:

I didn't have any wine so I used this without compromising the outcome. 

I am using this design of ring as inspiration for my design.

 Composition:

Playing with the orientation and size of the dot that represented the diamond was considered:

I chose to use a smaller dot to complement the widest thickness of the ring mark.

I considered the display at the exhibition and the orientation of the square can be rotated on any side without compromise too.

I submitted the design and waited anxiously.

I was very happy when I found out my work had been selected!

Unfortunately I was unable to go to Mother London however I was sent this picture of my work in the exhibition from Elliot Brodowski.