BRAND, STAR IMAGE, CONVENTIONS, COLOUR PALETTE, PHOTO MANIPULATION, GRAPHICS, ILLUSTRATIONS, FONT/TYPEFACE, MEDIA LANGUAGE, REPRESENTATION

Above is a printed version of draft three of our digipak, we printed it out and put it into a CD case which was really helpful to see how our final product will look and has helped us to see small improvements that we need to make which were harder to spot on the computer.

Below is a tally sheet we made and asked our class to write a tally next to the genre that they think our digipak represents.

This is the feedback that we received from our fellow media students. This was successful as they were able to guess or genre correctly meaning that we have represented our genre successfully. Moving forward, we still have a few tweaks to make to our digipak to fit to our genre even better and increase the overall popularity.

Above is our second draft of our digipak which our teacher did a screen castify on helping us with improvements and targets.

Things to improve:

• Title bigger
• Album cover name written in a bigger font
• Coloured background, to create a gradient
• Change the colour of one of the boys’ T shirt
• Boarder more of a tribal vibe
• Copy-write is wonky on the back page
• Change the shot on the back page

Our colour scheme and overall feel of our digipak so far has represented the Indie Folk genre successfully, and we have contained the conventions correctly, such as; copy-write, barcode, and spines.

Focusing forward, these improvements will help us significantly as we know we have a long way to go. So far we have represented our genre well but these improvements will overall increase our success.

Here is the first draft of our digipak. So far this is just a rough copy as we know we need to change a lot more to improve it. Below I have marked this draft using the success criteria given;

The use of camera and photoshop to take and manipulate engaging images:

From our shoot we were able to get more images of our same models used in our music video to be on the front page of our digipak. After exploring other indie folk artist’s album covers we found that the band or singers were almost always on the front page but they tended to make the back page more simplistic and minimalistic. So we will take this into account when making our second draft and not put a set picture as the main focus on the back page. We also ended up not having enough time to cut out the pictures of our models on photoshop so we will be sure to do this for draft two so that we are able to place them on a more fitting background for our genre.

The selection of mise-en-scene in the photo and the meaning it communicates:

As our genre is indie folk we made sure to incorporate traditional things that would represent the genre well. After researching other indie folk music stars and looking at their album covers and music videos they often contained traditional instruments such as pianos, acoustic guitars and string instruments. Because of this we managed to get hold of some bongo drums and a ukulele for our shoot. These props are cultural codes (Barthes) for a particular genre of music in this case organic, traditional, indie folk. Following up from our shoot we should’ve brought more outfit changes for our models to wear so that we had a bigger variety of different shots that we could’ve also used for our social media page. We also should’ve thought about the colour of the boys’ shirts as because they are both white they will be more challenging to cut out on photoshop. For our second draft we will explore with a folky boarder as a frame to represent the genre and produce a better star image which will attract the target audience.

The create use of DTP to integrate images and text and the use of colour\types-faces:

Desktop publishing enables us to create our digipak in a layout where we can see how our final result will look. We are able to edit all on the conventions such as a bigger title, barcode, copywriter, spines etc. in a way that fits digipaks and a way which represents our genre well. Our current title is quite boring so we will edit this to make it bigger, and indie folk font and colour scheme.

Overall, I would mark our draft one at a C as it is clear that it is a digipak and so far I think represents our genre adequately. To increase our grade we cut out our models and place them on a background that presents our genre and our star image which will appeal to our target audience, increasing the overall success.

Following up from our digipak shoot we have made contact sheets of all of the shots we took. As Gian- Luca and Evan were the stars for our music videos we will make them our models of the front page of our digipak. We tried to get shots in many different positions and using different props to make the shots more interesting, we made sure to get different kind of shots as we will use some of these photos for our social media page as well as our digipak. Unfortunately the camera was too exposed to achieve the vintage, retro feel we wanted, so we ended up using an app on our phones which added a grainy, vintage feel filter.

Focusing forward, if we do another shoot we will make sure to bring a few different outfits for the boys to wear so we have more of a variety of completely different shots to use for our social media page and we would make sure that both the boys aren’t in white shirts as it made it more challenging to cut them out on photoshop.

I chose to analyse and annotate Mumford & Sons album cover as they are a popular indie folk band. I decoded the technical elements of this album cover and learn the importance of including conventions such as a barcode, publisher logo, tracks, band name etc.  The overall style on an album cover depend on the combination of colour, imagery and typography. This repertoire of elements conjugate together to create the desired effect and representation of the artist’s star image.

Decoding this album cover has helped my to understand the Indie Folk community deeper. I know now the certain repertoire of elements that Indie Folk bands consist of in order to reach their target audience and meet all of their needs. Such as, a simplistic design with simplistic imagery and text, and a neutral colour scheme. Learning this will help us to create our digipak in a way that is the same but different, appealing to the Indie Folk community and growing success.

In preparation for our digipak photo shoot we created a risk assessment and a product meeting agenda. Our risk assessment states any potential risks we may face on our shoot and how we will control these risks. This is for our teachers so they know we will be safe and sensible. Our product meeting agenda states where we will be, who we will be with and our plans for the shoot. Making this helps us to keep organised and manage our time well as we have everything we need to know written down that we can also easily share with our models so that they know where to be at that time, and what they may need to bring to the shoot e.g costume or props.

In preparation for starting the design of our digipak we drew a ‘mock up’ plan for our work. We annotated the designs with the conventional technical elements eg. song title, barcode etc and labeled the designs with how the media language of print will help encode the star image and meta narrative of the performer. Around our drawing we have inserted what the colour palette will look like in each part of the digipak design. We decoded how the colour palette will appeal to our genre and how it will represent our preferred star image.

Focusing forward, this mock up will give us a base to work from and improve as we go along. Decoding all the conventions will remind us the importance of using a repertoire of elements that represent our genre and star image well to create our music video as ‘the same but different’. This will help improve the success rate of our music video as it will appeal to our target audience.

Researching the key characteristics of your target audience is a very important part of producing successful media. We explored the demographics and psychographics of typical indie folk consumers. We wrote a mission statement for our band of things that they stand for and characteristics they find important in their indie folk community.

From doing this we have learnt a better understanding of the likes and dislikes of our target audience, so we can be sure that we represent the star image and brand in a way that will appeal to this target audience.