A Flipped Side of the Moon

This is the Classic Album Makeover assignment which calls for a visual rethinking of a famous album cover. It is worth 2 1/2 points.

I’ll admit, I bet everyone thinks of this album cover for this assignment. It’s simple, iconic, and has been interpreted beyond belief for seemingly hundreds of years. 

I made a point of trying to keep this simple. Trying to much with this sort of iconic image, loading it up with all sorts of bells and whistles, seemed the wrong sort of move. My goal was to add something significant-but-subtle to the image to spark a visual reappraisal of just what’s going on here.

It probably goes without saying for this cover: I was always going to flip it, reverse it, mirror it, something. When given a triangle and a few lines on a black background, almost anything is possible, but the obvious potential for easy, geometrical fun was too hard to pass up. I settled on flipping the triangle, keeping the beam of light in the same direction. I then had fun with GIMP’s smudge tool to create a jagged, lighting-like effect as the light passes through the triangle and refracts. My initial plan was to change the background to a night sky instead of the plain black backdrop, but I couldn’t find one that wasn’t cheesy.

So while this is admittedly something of a simple album cover makeover, I think its simplicity is where it shines.