This, I think, is my best draft so far. I've made the changes I said I would - enlarged Taylor and kept Amy small - and I made the wall black as opposed to the background which is now white - illiminating the rock/horror codes. It still seemed too dark to me, so I changed the red colouring to pink - making it able to be read as more girly, like a girl's diary. This suits Taylor Swift far better. It also seems quite minimal which is of course important having studied her iconic image.

This cover involves Taylor cutting up a heart with a twisted smile for a facial expression, implying that it's been designed after the song - after she's had her revenge and now she's moving on by getting rid of any evidence of her relationship with Guy, and is happy about moving on. The contrast in sizes between her and Amy conveys the sense that Taylor feels that she's been successful, she's won by conquering what she said out to do - get revenge. Although both characters will be photos, everything else is in the style of a girl's diary, which is unique and post-modern, expanding Taylor's diversity and hopefully the interest of her fans.

I've thought of a way to transform my last album artwork idea into an image that's more "Taylor". If I make sure that I (ie Taylor) is much larger, becoming the main image on the cover, and I make Amy smaller on the other side of the wall. This focuses the audience's attention on the artist, the artist's name and the title of the album as opposed to an entire scene taking place. It could work as it's from Taylor's perspective so she'd like to see herself as the bigger person, and Amy as a minor obstacle in her way. The black is a bit heavy, so perhaps I could make the wall black instead and the main background white - most of Taylors backgrounds have been white/light pastel colours before.

I've experimented with a few more things. I don't have Photoshop at home, so I've been trying to use Paint to create rough album artwork, which isn't going very well.

I tried getting rid of the wooden floor background, ultimately to make it grass instead. However I only got as far as making the background white, plus as the picture is merely a printscreen of a moving image the quality is pretty poor too, so to cut out a lot of hard work for primarily bad results I'll have to really ask someone to take a photograph of me lying on some grass.

Next, I tried experimenting yet again. The style below will be replaced by photographed images if I decide on this for the album cover. The red scribbling is then supposed to have been Taylor's character scribbling over photographs in anger; comparing Amy to the devil for instance. Again, it's not really Taylor's style, but neither is this song! Perhaps it needs a new style to suit the new tone of song? I'll remain in the planning stage for now.

A newer, lighter idea I'v had is to feature just "Taylor"'s eyes, looking deviously down at her diary, which states the title of the song as well as her name, and a montage of images.

This involves the three main conventions - the artist, artist name and song title, as well as being unique and having the key colours for revenge - red and black.

It will be quite complicated to make, and will perhaps be too busy to be oneof her album covers; so I'll keep planning.

Today during period one and after school I have been looking more into album artwork and experimenting with designing, I don't plan to use any of the designs I have made, it was merely to see what I could do.

I came to the conclusion that although the song revolves around revenge, all three of these covers are too dark for Taylor's genre so I'd have to rethink the entire style and tone of the covers in order to make the end result appear to be realistic. Also, I didn't think that all of these covers suited having both the title and artist name on the cover, however Taylor's album artwork always strictly follows conventions so I'll have to.

 

Having thought through my original idea a lot, I've come to the conclusion that it is too busy and postmodern for a Taylor Swift album cover, considering how plain and conventional her covers are. So, instead, I've composed a new idea.

It will primarily follow the conventions kept on her other album covers - the artist as the main feature, artist name at the top and title lower down, however I've decided to make it more interesting and ultimately different.

The artist will be lying down on grass (high angle shot from directly above), and certain props used in the video that represent revenge will be dotted around in the grass. It should be subtle yet effective. And the word "revenge" will be drawn across both pages of the diary in red ink, representing the obvious anger, passion, violence and danger. This will have to stand out as it is a part of the title, but in the image itself. The entire cover should all be bright - it's meant to be summer after all, as a juxtaposition, and the costume I will carefully consider and plan at a later date.

Album Cover Planning
Having researched, examined and analysed various pieces of album artwork; including all those available by Taylor Swift, I decided to compile a few rough ideas to gain a better, more visual and realistic picture of what mine could look like.

I found from looking at Taylor Swift's album covers, that they are all very simple and extremely conventional. They have the artist, artist name and album/single name on the cover, and with a plain background.

I however, want to alter this, though in a way that could still be realsticly a Taylor Swift cover. I'd like to make it busier and more interesting to look at, with more of an insight into the pragmatics of the song and style of the video, but in order to do this I have to emphasise the traditional conventions.

I plan to have the artists name at the top, in Taylor Swift's writing:

And the single name: Better Than Revenge, to the bottom-right corner - following traditional Western culture.

"Revenge" I've planned to have in red, to make it stand out as it really is the key word and idea for fans to consider and understand when listening to this song and watching the video. I'm also considering having it overlap the image of the artist's face to emphasise that importance even more.

The main image of the artist itself will be a close-up of her face. She will have reasonably heavy make-up, the iconic curled hair and a straw hat as featured in the video. Her facial expression should be decoded as angry, resentful, hurt - all linking to revenge, and there should be some strong red colouring in this image - whether it's lipstick or possibly I might be able to work some more red in there somewhere. Maybe a part of her pupils, although this may be too postmodern for Taylor Swift, I'd have to experiment.

The background image should consist of bright green grass, and a pale yet bright blue sky to juxtapose the darker 'revenge' storyline. It will play with the ideology of there being a superficial modern society - that although everything is perfect on the outside, there is a lot more depth to things, and breaking the stereotype that females are weak. They can be strong yet still feminine.

To work more into the cover, I'm thinking of involving a picnic bench which was used for a small fraction of the music video. It's outdoors so it will still be able to convey summer, and has built relevence to the song. The plan is to have multiple images of the artist using different uses of body language to convey a sense of anger and plotting. I might try to blur these images slightly to create a sense of desperation and francticness - insecurity, again to build up an insight to the storyline, or maybe not, again; I'll have to experiment.

I found that designing even this extremely rough outline in Paint was difficult, as I hadn't fully pictured every detail in my head - where exactly the text would be placed for example, not to mention that personally I have no idea how to merge multiple images into one image, so I'll have to do more research to look into this to see if it's realistic. If it is, I'll probably have to have a few trials to perfect it - and if not, I'll have to adapt or entirely change my first idea.