DAT Capstone Inspiration

 For my DAT Capstone, I have decided to create my own album. I am looking forward to this as I love doing graphic design and have never taken on a project of this magnitude before. The inspiration from this is taken heavily from modern day K-Pop albums. I've listened to K-Pop since middle school and this genre of music as well as the aesthetics of their album designs have greatly influenced my works. I figured this would be a great way to tie this all together in my final capstone project. I kept calling to a K-Pop album because of these heavy influences, but I find that this would not be the proper term as I am not Korean, nor do I plan on making any Korean music as I do not speak Korean...?? Therefore, this is simply an album heavily influenced by the stylings of K-Pop design. I plan to make a theme revolving around unity or community and the importance of such. My roommates and I all come from different backgrounds and walks of life so I figured our unity would be a great way to tie this together. Plus, my dorm is very eager to participate and excited to see what I come up with, so this will definitely be fun! :)

For this project, I have been looking into some of my favorite albums and their inclusions to get an idea of what sort of vibes or aesthetics I would like to utilize. One of my all-time favorite albums is BTS' Young Forever. This album, which came out around 2016, was a compilation album of their works from the album series The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, combining both part one and two. This album includes gorgeous, almost dreamy imagery of the members, including a polaroid picture inclusion and a poster. These effects are used to portray their greater theme of overcoming a harsher reality and living in this "beautiful moment". I feel the polaroid is a great touch to this as it sort of represents this "live in the moment" message since polaroid pictures take time to appear and therefore cannot be retaken if messed up. They kind of represent this fragility of those moments and I love that. 

Another album that really inspired me was Twice's Feel Special which came out around the same time. It includes photocards, a lyrics book, and a photobook. It is very simple, yet the music itself goes over the themes of youth, hardships and finding yourself/ self-appreciation. Listening to the songs, they keep it very upbeat, helping to find the positives in these experiences. Their designs utilize gold to help They dress up in the pictures as well to celebrate these themes, letting each member show their individual styles in a way while also showing how they all complement each other in a group as well. Overall, I am very excited for this project and cannot wait to gather more inspirations and get started!