[Theory] Ayu and her art director...

[freedreamer]

Would probably explain why CDL0910 and AT10's logos looks so wild lol..
I miss the m-u A, Secret A, NEXT LEVEL A stuff...they were creative and cute...now its like, Ayu wanted to get fierce..which I dont mind too

[ohsixthirty]

its a really interesting theory that you've obviously spent some time thinking about. its entirely possible.

but if this change brought about the rock n roll circus covers, i say bring the other art director back!

[ren0210989]

Originally Posted by zoomzoom

It sounds plausible since they seemed to have disappeard. Sunrise/Sunet was a post-production disaster flat out and I guess it's possible time issues kept her from changing the covers or have someone else retouch them.

The future will show if they will remain absent, I really hope so. Her physical products have improved quite a lot from it.

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[AngelSenshi]

This is an excellent theory, and certainly very plausible. Though it could be tons of reasons that they're gone, this does make sense, but it could've been she wanted a different image and needed to make some changes, which I can understand.

It certainly explains why recent stuff has been so fierce, from covers, tour logo designs, tour merch and so on. She's going in a slightly different direction and it's certainly keeping things fresh, which I like.

As for the hate against Kazuyoshi; I almost hate his photographic works. I don't care how great he was for Koda and for other artists, for Ayu it just doesn't seem to work. It's just that sometimes a 'subject' and the photographer don't go well together, so you need to find a match that works. I don't think that match works very well with him. Though not always, his PVs for example; he's directed Mirrorcle World, GREEN, Sparkle and Lady Dynamite. I loved Mirrorcle World, GREEN and Lady Dynamite; I have a love-hate relationship with Sparkle I guess.

[waterballoon]

so the horror of Sunrise was...

disgusting photos shot by Kazuyoshi Shimomura + gross and bad photoshopping and imaging by her fired imaging team?

Perfect combo to make the worst Ayu single cover ever.

They're still good though... creating the A and all, but hey if Ayu has a different direction from them now, then... it's a necessary move.

[Delirium-Zer0]

RICE-momoya honestly have NEVER been that good. Ayu's CD designs have almost universally been disappointing for me across the board, if I'm being entirely honest. Their work (at least for ayu) has always tended to be amateurish or dull or uncreative or tacky. It's always had at least one HUGE thing wrong with it. But lately, to say that their work has been bad is an understatement. I have no idea what happened, if they're taking on interns to do Ayu CDs or what, But S/S~LiA~ did things that even freshman art students would simply NEVER do. EVER. Ridiculous text placement, lazy cropping of the photo, the over-retouching of ayu's face... it was all awful, and it reeked of upstart student trying to prove how awesome they are and failing miserably.

Arguably the trouble started with GUILTY. The photos were admittedly probably difficult to work with, but there was no coherence to the album booklet's design, alot of what they did was cheap and shoddy and poorly put-together and the text was VERY hard to read (previous albums, especially MY STORY and RAINBOW, had issues with this as well - especially the credits page x_x). That sort of thing is REALLY basic - and before you ask, yes, I could probably do better. So could alot of the amateur designers (or if there are any other professionals here) who post fan works at this very forum.

Ayu gave them multiple chances to redeem themselves, probably too many. Mirrorcle World's photos were overexposed (I guarantee Shimomura didn't take them to look like that), A COMPLETE was dull, Days had the same issue as MW with the photos PLUS the added issue of white on light pink somehow being readable to the designer ("Far away" and "Moments" both had this issue back in the day as well... overall the folks at momoya are NOT good typographers). Rule wasn't bad, boring font (again, typography = no for those people) but the art direction and coloring was pretty good aside from the Ayu-goku drawing not really matching. NEXT LEVEL followed in that vein, so overall it wasn't bad either, just kinda messy.

Then S/S was the last straw, after multiple extreme failures and only, let's face it, "meh" performance before that.

(In my opinion, the best graphic designer Ayu ever had was Michiho Ogasawara, with RICE, who designed everything for the LOVEppears era. Good use of Helvetica, which isn't easy, some creative font treatments, different types of colors and layouts... quite talented, IMHO)

But yeah, amana had been doing CG treatment on ayu's covers for awhile (that term could cover soooo many things, so I'm not sure what it is exactly that they were doing), so it seems she went with them for the actual design work. Shinichi Hara is hopefully out of the picture, because his team had only ever been so-so at best, and lately they really were making things look awful.

I also think it was them the whole time, not Shimoko, making ayu's photos look terrible. Shimoko has taken some AMAZING photos of ayu over the years, including the "You were" covers. It's possible his personal photoshop team sucked horribly, but either way, it wasn't the photos, it was the treatment of them, and after seeing how "You were" turned out, I'm fairly certain of that. (That said, he should only ever do art direction for videos - directing human movement is NOT a strong point for him, but colors and cinematography DEFINITELY are.)

[truehappiness]

For anyone who wants to see what amana interactive can do:
http://amanainteractive.jp/archives/category/all

The regular amana site:
http://amana.jp/

AMAZING, haha. They're so diverse when it comes to their designs. MOMOYA's site was never that stylish. -anger- Haha.

[lumieregrl]

The horrible typography had been bugging me too. I've been buying all of Ayumi's singles starting with Mirrorcle World, and so many of them are nigh unreadable. The point is to be able to READ it while it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and they've failed miserably.

I don't think Kazu's pictures can be blamed for how sorry the S/S single looks, even a bad picture can look good with editing and such. My main problem with Kazu is the weird facial expressions in print and in video.

I have noticed with how classy Ayu has looked since You Were... She looks more mature but still young and just very beautiful.

[AyUta]

Very good theory . We just have to make sure with future releases.

[ayu_ready?]

I dunno what to like or not....I loved her shots from LOVEppears till MY STORY I don't know who to blame for this, or anything. everyone surely has it's own taste, but I think her covers from that period, even if looked plain, were much much better than some over-glam cheap-looking boring-weird-face Kazu ones

[Yumsushi]

If those were the fools responsible for Sunrise/Sunset then good riddance. The credits in future releases will confirm this.

[Cherry Dynamite]

I think it's a good move, It doesn't matter much if they did awesome stuffs before if they are failing do deliver now.

[Delirium-Zer0]

Agreed. If ayu could just only bring back Michiho Ogasawara (and also Shigeru Kasai, but only for stuff that all tied together - that was REALLY his forte, designing multiple CDs that went together as a set), then the stuff would all be fantastic, I think, lol... but yeah, Shinichi Hara was just not doing his job as art director, really overseeing the design process as much as he needed to. Which is sad cuz his actual artwork, if you've seen it, is just gorgeous. He's a great artist, but a crappy art director. Some people just really shouldn't ever be in charge of something, you know?

[truehappiness]

Something tells me that Michiho might've retired or moved on to another design firm... there's no information on her out there other than the fact that she worked with MOMOYA/momoya (wtf is it different for haha) along with Shinichi Hara in the 1999/2000-era... and then that was it. Nothing else came from Michiho afterwards.

[freedreamer]

O gosh..u guys are so detailed about the names haha..So she's working with AMANA now?

[truehappiness]

She's working with amana, superb, and some other four-letter word group.

She seems to be flipflopping?

[kotora]

now i am looking forward ayu-mi-x 7 cover(if it ever exists).

[joshohhhhh]

who were the people responsible for most of (if not all) of her remix album covers?

[truehappiness]

Shinichi Hara / RICE MOMOYA (or RICE momoya, haha)...

[Ranma Matsuri]

I don't really know what to think. Assuming (if I read correctly) that these are the same people who did Secret, MW, BB, fairyland, NL, and the remix covers which even with their little chinks were all pretty amazing then I'm sorry to see them go. HOWEVER the travesty that was S/S is deserving of losing one's job.

The RnRC shoots was absolutely amazing. Mature, fun, sexy, and Ayu looked even more incredible than she usually does. So I hope we see more work from these new people she's working with. I wonder if they're going to work on Moon/blossom as well.