The next vinyl cover that I decided to design was Etta James' "At Last". I chose this track to illustrate because not only do I really love the strings in this song, I love that it is an iconic track that has never lost its magic. Secret7" describes it as 'timeless' so that is something that I definitely do not want to lose, so I am not going to stray too far, or 'reinvent' the cover, like I did with my Penguin brief. I want to emphasise and re-establish the track, perhaps in a more modern way.
Whilst doing my research, I listened to this track a lot to get even more of a feel of the tone and themes within it. I definitely would say that this is a romantic song, not only because of the strings but because of the slow paced and elongated words that Etta James sings. I would also say that this song radiates warmth and is a song loved by so many people, even though it is half a century old now, so I will have to consider that when I am think about colour palettes and rhythm on a page.
Like the last vinyl cover I designed, I looked at the lyrics more closely, so that I could spark some more ideas and see if I could visualise any of them in particular. I noticed that these lyrics are very vivid, and clear. I really like 'My heart was wrapped up in a clover' and 'My life is like a song', because one is a metaphor and the other is a simile, so they both emphasise the happiness and euphoria Etta now has, after her 'lonely days are over'. These lyrics transcend beauty and life in just small sentences, they are really powerful and I really thought about illustrating them when I got to brainstorming. However I am not sure if drawing them lines only would make a connection to the song itself, so this was something that I pondered for a while.
Looking at Etta James' previous album and single covers, there is only one that I found that was hand crafted, the others are photographs of the artist. Though this is fine, and after my research earlier, a lot of my own vinyls have photographs of the artist on them, I think that perhaps mixing the two, digitally creating a cover and including Etta's portrait would be a perfect way to bring this single to a more modern audience, but also keep the magic and the iconic element that there is to this track.
To keep more of that authenticity within the design, I looked at colour palettes of the 60s. Though a lot of them are quite neutral, the yellows, red and browns really appealed to me because I feel like these colours radiate the warmth that I talked about earlier. They are also quite romantic colours, which suits the tone of the song, and more importantly, they are colours that look attractive together, and will invite audiences in, rather than make them look away.
Lastly, after conducting all my relevant research, I brainstormed. I came up with a few solid ideas, but not as many as the previous track. I think this was because the song IS so iconic, that I didn't want to stray too far away from its concept and its existing content, making the judges question my results, so I tried to be concise and stick to ideas that really would fit the tone and the audience. Like I said earlier, I thought about being very literal with the lyrics and illustrating them either as a narrative or only a few of them. I also thought about a silhouette of Etta that is like her original covers, but more modern and perhaps done digitally, to attract a new audience in a new era. These were the two ideas that stood out to me most, so it is now a case of thinking it over, and choosing the one that I think will be the strongest fit for the brief.
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