Graphic Design Music Box

My music box is themed around dramatic concert band music. My assignment began with my idea of designing a music box inspired by a concert band because since I have been involved in a band for more than 10 years and I am still playing the clarinet, I’m strongly familiar with and interested in dramatic concert band repertoire. Dramatic melodies are harmonic melodies that enhance the ability for me to feel excited and subtle. They typically occur in repertoire in grade levels 4 through 6, strongly encouraging middle and high school ensembles to perform this kind of repertoire. I really enjoyed listening to the concert band repertoire so much. And all the band pieces that I listened to significantly. I’ve known many band composers such as Brian Balmages, Michael Sweeney, Frank Ticheli, Eric Whitacre, Steve Danyew, Kevin Day, Robert Jager, and Brant Karrick. Therefore, that is my favorite kind of music overall. My approach to this project is done by my own watercolor paintings with techniques of wet, dry, and bleed strokes. I learned these skills from my watercolor class in fall of 2024 which made me strongly compelled to create this music box with watercolor. The most important thing about it is reflecting the background classical feeling of concert band music by matching the freshness in connections to my original watercolor paintings. Baskerville type font, watercolor techniques, and mostly warm colors (red, orange, and yellow) and few cool colors (green, purple, and pink ) are considered appropriate to this theme because of its feeling of dramatic, freshness, and classical. The significance of this project is that background colors are so dramatic and there are so many things to be specific such as painting more dramatic watercolor backgrounds so every cover would not be boring, especially the essay booklet. The music box’s overall size is 7.5861 in by 7.5861 in by 3.4861 in. The lid long-pentagon-shaped tabs’ sizes are 7.5861 in by 0.5659 in by 0.9017 in by 6.0126 in 0.7573 in by 0.6452 in for left and right tabs and 0.5751 in by 0.8989 in by 6.0405 in by 0.7605 in by 0.6466 in by 7.6156 in for the front tab. It took 4 months to be fully completed on February 14, 2025 with lots of revisions. The 3 album packagings’ overall size is 7.5 in by 7.5 in by 1 in. It also took 2 months to be fully completed on December 12, 2024 with revisions. Album packaging and the box are made of Mohawk smooth ultrawhite 81PT heavyweight paper. For vinyl records, it is black-colored, fake, and made of plastic. Its brand is MINI ZOZI, and its size is 7 inches with a circumference of 21.99. Its cover is initially made of Mohawk heavyweight paper but is being changed to label sticker paper so it won’t come off often. By doing so, I got sticker sheets from Abby and she emailed an Illustrator png file for the layout of vinyl record cover. I then edited on Illustrator by copying covers from InDesign and then putting them on there. Its sticker covers’ sizes are 4.6667 in with a center circle being cut by 0.625 in. It was finally completed on February 5, 2025. The essay booklet is 24 pages long and 8 sheets of paper. Its size is 7 in by 7 in. It is made of Mohawk superfine smooth soft white 80 lb paper. It also took 2 months to be fully completed on December 11, 2024 with revisions being made. For the inner decorated paper, I copied the watercolor patterns that I did last semester and edited it on Photoshop. Then I printed out and glued the paper inside the music box so it completely covered the white part. It really stands out well as it matches the color palette with some darkness. Its size is 7.5861 in by 7.5861 in by 3.4861 in for the bottom part, 7.5861 in by 7.5861 in for the top part, and the same sizes above for all tabs. Although Tatiana didn’t mention this thing before, I had the idea of adding this inside the box. It was also completed on February 5, 2025, so I am glad about this change that I decided to make. The ribbon is 12 inches long and 0.8 inches wide. It was glued on the bottom of the box so I can easily pull everything out of the box. It was initially added on December 12, 2024, but then reglued on February 5, when the inner decorated paper was added. This music box has neither received any awards yet nor as a group project.