Shown below is our Digipak Draft 3 presented in a CD case, showing us how effective it would be as an album and what we can do to improve it. Following on from our teacher’s screen castity, we made amendments to our photos by increasing the use of the sharpening and dodge tool and changing the font for ‘Maeve’. This has increased the use of conventions and made our album match the genre more successfully. Furthermore, we changed our whole front cover by using an engaging image which we think portrayed our artist better, connoting her as a youthful, mischievous character.

Feedback from Peers – What genre does it represent?

In order to engage our audience, we asked our peers to choose what genre they thought we were portraying through our Digipak. This allowed us to know if our Digipak portrayed our Star Image correctly and decipher the metanarrative and branding.

Below is a tally we made for our peers to decide what genre they thought best fit our Digipak:

Pop: /////

EDM: /

Rock:

Country:

Indie: ///

R&B: /

Rap/Hip-Hop:

This feedback helped our group to realise that overall our Digipak is producing the right feeling for our audience as our top genres were Pop/ Indie. However, as our genre is mainly Indie we need to ensure that in our final draft,  we incorporate more features that will make our album stand out as that genre.

Presented below is our Digipak Draft 2. This draft of the four panes is improving as we present Maeve involving more key conventions, giving us and the audience a better overview of how we plan our Digipak to look as the final product.

FEEDBACK FROM TEACHER

TARGETS:

• Find a different font for ‘Maeve’ on the front cover.
• On the front cover, make the background colour more white to brighten it up.
• Use different tools on Photoshop to make our model look more fresh.
• Use Dodge Tool on Photoshop to make artists eyes brighter.
• Make photo on the back cover larger to get her to stand out more.
• Choose a picture for inside the TV.

This screen castify was extremely helpful to get feedback on what needed to be improved and changed in our digipak for draft 3. An important point in our feedback is that using different tools on Photoshop is vital for creating a more fresh and clean image and the rest of our feedback will be helpful for the next time we are editing.

EVALUATION OF PHOTOSHOOT:

I am very proud of what we have managed to achieve throughout the process of our Digipak. From planning, to taking photos we have successfully gained what we need in order to make our Digipak effective. All of our photos have their own exclusive quirk but getting inspiration from Pinterest, enabled us to have ideas on how we can portray our artist in the best way.

Here are the Contact Sheets from the shoot for our Digipak.

CONTACT SHEETS LOOK 1

FAVOURITE PHOTO LOOK 1

CONTACT SHEETS LOOK 2

FAVOURITE PHOTO LOOK 2

CONTACT SHEETS LOOK 3

FAVOURITE PHOTO LOOK 3

CONTACT SHEETS LOOK 4

FAVOURITE PHOTO LOOK 4

Evaluation Of Shoot :

I am so excited with how our photos turned out for all of shoots. As a team, we all co operated to get the best possible photos to make our Digipak successful. We got our inspiration from existing photos on Pinterest, however we put our own Mise – En – Scene and characterism into each photo to make them original. I enjoyed adding our own uniqueness to the photos and I think this could result in a trendy, modern digipak portraying a youthful, quirky artist.

We added our own different lighting to make the photo more bold, and the angles and quality turned out really effectively. Ensuring we had more than enough photos gave us confidence that we would have plenty of options to choose from to make our Digipak as successful as possible.

The photos I chose as my favourites had a classy and exclusive feeling to them and I think with editing and photoshopping we could make them stand out even more than they do now to compare to our competitors.

Going forward, I think our chosen images will make an impressive Digipak and I am delighted with how our team worked together to ensure every activity we did was organised and uncomplicated.

Shown below is Draft 1 of our front and back covers on our Digipak.

SELF ASSESSMENT

WHAT TO IMPROVE IN OUR NEXT DRAFT

• Explore different tools on Photoshop.
• Place a photo in the TV.
• Add in the company/ record label and different Technical Conventions.
• Use different filters for the inside covers.

To help us be more prepared for our second shoot, we made a Production Meeting Agenda to sort out what makeup, costumes, props and equipment we required. This enabled us to achieve the best outcome possible for our shoot.

Shown below is our Risk Assessment sheet where we assessed the risks and how we needed to manage these.

Digipaks all contain their own conventions, and they have a certain repertoire of elements which help show information and represent their artist.

Formal and technical conventions are key factors in digipaks to reflect all information the audience need to learn. They include; the artists name, the album name, copyright logo, barcode and the list of tracks contained in the album.

Generic conventions in the Indie genre includes elements like, make-up, colour palettes, costumes, style and personality. The artist is always presented bodly in the centre of the image and there are clear word layouts incorporated to make it more quirky.

I chose to annotate Olivia Rodrigo’s album because she is a new, popular upcoming artist (similar to our artist) and plays around with Indie/ Pop music. Rodrigo was interesting to annotate due to her lack of technical and generic conventions, with the basic conventions covered she improvised by using her own ideas to match her own style and personality. This was great for us to understand what works well in the Indie/ Pop genre.

Going forward, this task will help me create a blueprint for my album including the key conventions and repertoire of elements that will portray my star image well.

PLANNING SHOTS AND PLACEMENT

Each of these images convey the Indie genre. I chose them as my inspiration because they have a quirkiness and edginess to them that sets them apart from other images. I think they could work really well with our Digipak to make it eye-catching and striking to our target audience. Each image shows a powerful, extraordinary woman which is what we are aiming to portray. We plan on having a picture of our model posing with a TV as our front cover, after editing we hope to have an image of our artist in the TV to show her main star image and brand image. Having two different images in one photo makes it distinct from others which is important in media. As shown through research, our target enjoys copying Indie artists styles and adding it to their own personal identity, this can be done by incorporating funky, and fun makeup looks and costumes into our Digipak to make their overall experience enjoyable.

CREATING OUR OWN COLOUR SCHEME

Shown below are the main colours we will be using in our Digipak. These colours were developed from the images above that were chosen as inspiration. We made these colour swatches using Adobe Colour wheel.

I think that these colours will help our Digipak stand out to the audience as they are the basic Indie/ Pop colours with a bold and striking look to them. Whilst researching Indie/ Pop I realised that this genres colour conventions tend to be black and white with a pop of colour, so I will take this on board for my Diigpak. However if I feel there is too much colour making it unconventional, I will use a basic Indie font in the colour to make it not too colourful.

DIGIPAK BLUEPRINT

Designing a blueprint for my Digipak and incorporating the important conventions allowed me to navigate all the repertoire of elements which must be included in my Digipak. The front and inside right cover match through the use of blue in our artists costume and the lighting giving a more clean look so it isn’t too overcrowded with the barcode, and copyright stickers. Then the left inside cover and back cover match perfectly with the striking neon pink, giving a slightly more powerful look than the other two.

This activity was very helpful in order for my group to get a simple understanding of how we picture our Digipak to look. We have decided that ‘Adolescence’  is a memorable album name since it corresponds to our young artist, mixing her ordinary and extraordinary lifestyle for the audience to get a full view of how being a young adult is. Overall, everything works cohesively for our Digipak and I hope to achieve this result by the end of this project.

We used Padlet to provide inspiration for our digipak by collecting make – up looks, poses, tour posters and different designs of graphics. All of these images show a clear style of what we are going for to entice our audience and our repertoire of elements helps gives us the receipt of ingredients and defines the chosen genre. It has also allowed us to lay down a blueprint of what we are looking to portray in our digipak as of which are a sensual feeling, mystery, playfulness and power.

This has helped us massively as we now have a style and brand that we can work towards and use to attract and lure our target audience.

A Mission Statement and Marketing Strategy is very important to support an artist. As shown in our slideshow above, we have used integrated advertising, including; our mission statement, our target audience, a call to action, USP and our main competition. Although our music video will be included in our album, we aim to supply full promotion for our artist and brand rather than just the music video itself.

This will help us in the future as it gives us a good head start for what our campaigns long – term, overall missions are. Our target audience is aimed at the ages of 13-25 and we focus to provide a unique, soft persona and music genre. As shown in our ‘call to action’ slide, our artist looks to be both ordinary and extraordinary to show their modest and genuine side but also show their star image prospects and personality to give the audience something to be inspired by.