Here is mine and my groups Digipak draft 3 in a CD case. Overall I am really happy with how this turned out and I think it conveys our genre of ‘pop’ well. Key conventions such as certain colour, images , font style, lighting, props etc play a big role in helping to convey a particular genre. It is important to create a specific representation for a genre in order to attract the correct target audience and so it is clear what kind of music will be on the album. We achieved and conveyed the genre of pop successfully through our digipak by including a script style font, generic pop colours and used the correct MES to match our genre to give this overall elegant, confident and mysterious feel. This is also important for branding and to follow these key elements throughout products.

To check if our genre is portrayed through our digipak to a wider audience we created a quick survey with the names of some different genres of music down the side including our own genre. We then went around the sixth from centre and showed people our digipak whilst they placed a tally mark next to one of the genres on the piece of paper they thought ours was. The results showed that the majority of people chose the correct genre so we were successful with our digipak and used key conventions to portray this.

 

Screen Castify Feedback and Targets:

• Try different fonts on the front cover to see which ones work best together – same font as track list
• Image could be canted – crop out halo
• Play with contrast in photoshop to add detail
• shadow on circle – CD
• Bring some of the graphics from the CD onto the inside pane
• add ‘Violet’ onto the spine
• Font on spine same as violet on cover
• Some pink tracks

 

This is my groups first Draft of our Digipack front and back cover. We made sure to follow and use all of the typical conventions of an album cover and thought about our star image and how we want to portray her. We used a similar colour palette to the colour wheel in the previous post. When choosing our front and back cover images from our shoot, we made sure to choose one which used good MES, well focused and nicely framed. We added in some graphics on the front which tied in with the colours of the lipstick and font colour. When it came to the font we chose two different fonts to separate the name of the artist and her album name

 

Targets for improvement:

• Improve the graphics on CD
• Make ‘Falling from Grace’ lower case
• Change background image behind CD to something more relevant
• Photoshop inside cover picture to exaggerate it and add some graphics to it
• Add some more pink to the back cover
• Adjust composition of front image
• Add quote or some lyrics to inside pane image
• Duplicate image on front and turn opacity down

Here are our contact sheets of images that we took in our digipak shoot. Overall I think the shoot was successful and we used good MES to convey our star image in a particular way to match our genre of music. We experimented with different backgrounds including a silver sheet which we put up and then used the white and back studio backdrops to see which one looked best. We also used a variety of different angles and camera distances.

Graphics / illustrations Drafts Ideas:

For the CD we are thinking of including some graphics of a pair of wings and a halo which will be outlined in a neon pink to match the vibe. We will do this on photoshop and use an image outline of a pair of wings and halo and use the pen tool to create this outline and then used the blending option to create these lines. Also might outline the wings on the front cover of the digipak. Here is a video of a photoshop tutorial we are think of re creating:

Before we went ahead with the shoot we made a production meeting and risk assessment sheet to make sure that we have all the equipment and things we need for this shoot. It also helps us to stay organised and have a clear plan of what we are going to do. A risk assessment is also important to make sure there are no hazards whist completing the shoot and if there are, how we will go about this. For this shoot we are going to use both the black and white studio with lighting. We are going to take a series of images of our model represented in a dark but angelic way. Our aims for the shoot are:

– use good MES
– convey our music genre
– portray a desirable star image

Here is a rough idea I came up with for my Digipak. I thought about the colour scheme that I was going to use, where the name of the artist was going to be, the images which are going to be used on the cover and any other key technical convention. The representation I want to create is the star as confident, fun and quirky. Also use graphics and images to help attract people to the album and make them want to buy it (aesthetically pleasing). Below I’ve also attached a colour wheel of the colours which I want to include.

I had a look at some professional Digipak front and back covers who fit the genre of our artist/ music and found this Jessie J cover. I then did a detailed analysis of this looking into all the typical conventions of a Digipak and annotated how the cover shows and portrays the artist and genre of music. By analysing a professional Digipak cover it will help me in the future when creating my own cover because I have learnt all the key conventions of one and the meaning  of them. It has also helped me to get an idea of how they are laid out and what needs to be included to make a good one. It is important to have an interesting and conventional cover to attract audiences and make them want to buy the album.

Hers is our mood board of inspiration me and my croup created surrounding ideas for our Digipak. We took inspiration from our artists and similar artists social media pages to get an idea of the colour schemes, fonts and images. We included other images relevant to our genre –  colours we want to include in our own work and how we want our star image to be portrayed: confident, fun, quirky, creative, passionate etc. This inspiration will help us to convey a particular style in our Digipak and how to represent our star and her music.

Before we start to design our own Digipak we created a slideshow of information surrounding our artists target audience (psychographics and integrated advertising), similar artists and their branding, promotion, USP, research around our genre ( what colour scheme, images, font etc) would be best to use in our own work. Within this we also came up with our own mission statement to help promote our album and attract our target audience.

By doing some research before hand will help me and my group when it comes to designing my own digipak as we know now the target audience for our particular genre and how we can create a unique selling point which will then help to promote our artist. A catchy mission statement will also help attract audiences into listening to our album or to buy the CD.