Cover Letter
Hi! My name is Benjamin Shell, and I am a Design student at Freestyle Academy. Over the past two years, I have refined my skills in music production, song-writing, audio engineering, graphic design, and marketing. Outside of my Freestyle work, I spend my time listening to all types of music, working out, and watching movies with my family and friends.
For my Senior Showcase, I am pleased to share the artwork and music from my Senior Zenith Project. To me, this project was the culmination of all my skills and mediums that I had developed over the years. The project involved creating a unified final product which tied together music and artwork in a way that a professional album would. With this goal in mind, I had to do extensive planning and brainstorming ahead of time to lay out the final vision of the project.
For the music aspect of the project, I would like feedback on the listening experience. What do you think is working well? What do you think could be improved? As for the artwork aspect of the project, I would like feedback on the visual experience, similar to the music. What did you enjoy and why? What could be improved? How well do the artwork and music intertwine?
Next year, I will be attending Stanford University, where I plan on pursuing a degree in business. I hope to continue my music passion with other creative students next year and continue to make music for the love of it. I hope to make use of my music knowledge and pursue a career in marketing and or the business of the music industry.
You can reach me at benjaminshell101@gmail.com
Music Production
For my music, I wanted to create a unified album that had an overall theme to it. With a theme established, I then proceeded to brainstorm out each song by jotting out ideas of what the beats and lyrics should sound like. This was extremely important in helping me curate a uniting style and theme throughout the album. This process also helped me create a set of reference notes to refer back too when I was feeling creatively stuck and to also help keep me on track with the overall theme of the album.
Artwork
I wanted each piece of artwork to have a uniting theme, like the music. To achieve this, I created and used the same color scheme for each piece. As for the style, I chose a minimalist style that relied on simple designs to connect to the corresponding music. For each poster, I brainstormed out 5 different ideas and choose the strongest one. This helped push me as an artist and create the strongest artwork I could.
Reflection
As I move from high school to college, I know I will remain extremely grateful to this project for helping teach and solidify the skill of long-term planning and self-discipline. Zenith helped take a large, final product due in a few months and break it down into shorter sections. And it would take discipline to get those small sections done and done well in order for the whole final product to come together nicely. I am appreciative to have fine-tuned these skills over the course of this project as they will carry over into my life with college and career for the many years to come.
In the end, Zenith was a powerful example of what can be created if you combine passion with hard work and discipline. While the final product may not have been perfect, I was still satisfied with and extremely proud of what I had created. It was rewarding to see the whole project come together and it really put into perspective how hard work pays off.