Substantial brief - Secret 7 - Imagine

I have left this album cover to last minute I'm not going to even pretend that I didn't. This is the song that I liked the least, as it's so well known and so over done that it's incredibly hard to come up with a new and imaginative (lol) idea. After listening to the song quite a few times, I had nothing coming to mind. I was even getting annoyed at the lack of inspiration I was getting from this song, which is why I had been putting it off for so long...

So I looked at existing album covers to get some inspiration:

I really like how quick the drawing is,  maybe I should do something similar but then what's the point in recreating something that already exists. 

So I decided to look at the lyrics, as this had helped me in previous songs.

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

I managed to pick out key words from the song, but still wasn't really sure how to put them together visually without creating something quite generic. But I really wanted to have my work inspired by this, or it won't link to the song. 

I then thought, what about focusing on John Lennon himself rather than the specific song? He does have very recognisable facial features. So I drew him again and again and again

I ended up with this drawing, even though I wasn't too sure what I was actually going to do with it. 

I like how you can tell who it is without using much, just some lines and shapes. I thought I should keep the album cover design quite simple seeing as the illustration is only a fine liner drawing. So I put it into photoshop

I went for the limited colour palette again! I just think it looks the smartest, too many colours I think can look quite childish. I then went for the circle to symbolise the world and eternity, which links into the lyrics of the song which I wanted to do. Although I think this design is still quite obvious and not out of the box enough. I think you can tell that I was not as interested in doing this song as I was about doing the others. But I suppose at least you can tell what song it is that I'm trying to visualise.