Draft Designs for Our Digipak

Advert for Fight The Bear

Time Management Update

Today we are going to finish work on editing. I have managed to gather a lot of print research as revision notes for when we start work on designing our own digipak. I have also started to think about the design of our digipaks and have started brainstorming ideas. However editing has been taking up a lot of the month which has been slowing down the production because we have been unfamiliar with the technology which all a part of the learning progress.

Designing a Digipak: Digipak Analysis 3

The final digipak that I have decided to look at is Mumford & Sons "Sigh No More" album. The first thing to notice about the front cover is that there are three high street shopping buildings in the background with the white coloured one postioned in the middle of the image which sets up the mise-en scene sceanario. The artisits can be seen standing inside, visually postioned inside making them look like shop-window dummies which gives it an entropic feel. As for the logos, they are located at the bottom-middle of the cover written in black font which stands out agaisnt the white tiled pavement.

As we look inside the digipak, someting that stands out the moment that it's opened is the colour scheme of the cd which, unlike the other images which are mostly white, the cd is compeltely black whith the logo being written in white text to stand out and the logo's of the distrubting companies involved located at the bottom. There is also an image of the four members of the band each looking out of a window and as there only four windows, this image gives the audeince a feeling of teamwork and unity.

Finally the image design of the back cover is slightly different from the others I have been looking at latley, as the list of tracks are postioned in a row format instead of a coloum format. There is an image of a closed window which takes up a third of the cover which probably represents the end of the album. We can see the distribution logos again located at the bottom of the image, and a barcode scan token just under the track list. Lastly between the barcode and the logos there are a list of aknowledgements written in small text.

Designing a Digipak: Digipak Analysis 2

The first thing to notice about the front cover of the digipak featuring Gerald Clayton as the main artist is the main image is very stark with few redundant features. It only consists of a partially lit close-up of Gerald' face. The lighting enhances the textures of his face in a black shadowy background wearing a bow-tie which gives the audience a touch of class. As for the text, both paragraphs are written in bright colours of white and red which project themselves well making the text very stark and clear.

The outside cover leads the audience into the rest of the digipak where the layout treats the rest of the designs with a similar setting of black backgrounds meeting bright colours and the simplicity of the white text on the black background. The use of the same font on the cd encourages the audience to pick up and play the cd. The list of track are located on the back cover along with another image of the artist taken in black and white standing against part of a house made of stone with a window to emphasis the genre. The angle detail of this shot emphasises the structure of the rough stone texture which is highlighted to our face but his clothing is impossible to see due to the lighting and the name Two Shade is a metaphor for the imagery.

Designing a Digipak: Digipak Anaylsis 1

As well as print adverts , we have also been looking at other digipaks to try and find ideas for our own desgins when we finish the editing process. Sadly I haven't been able to find many examples of digipaks made in the independant genre , however I have managed to find two that may be interesting.

The first of these Digipaks is Jack Johnson's Inbetween Dreams which begins with the front cover using only the colours yellow and balck to create the entropic mise-en scene image of a man holding a guitar and picking fruit from a mango tree that takes up nearly the whole of the cover which is a reference to the Mango Tree, the studio where In Between Dreams was recorded. At the bottom right of the image there is a blue placeholder sticker of the publishers brand logo, Universal Records empahsiing the digipak as a "speciel edition" as well as a black sticker at the top-left side advertising the tracks featured. As for the text, that's has been done in an redundant font with black and white text which both stand out well agaisnt a yellow background. The front cover should be appealing to an older audience who would prefer relaxing images as to most of today's cd and digipak covers which usually feature an image of the artist taking up the majority of the image.

Secondly, the back cover of the digipak contains a whole amount of little details and advertisment images as well as an etropic image of a tree which is part of the image of the tree located on the front cover, Firstly, there is a listing of the number of tracks located on the left hand side of the image, there are three website links connotated on the lower section of the cd below two logos which advertise Bushfire Records and Member 1% which could possibly be two other manufacturing companies accosised with the artisit. Other redundant details include copyright information located on the right hand side and a barcode which is used by store scanners to determine the price on the bottom-left corner.

Next, going into the contents of the digipak, the cd- holder has a simple design of four leaves with the stark dark-green brushing against the yellow section of the plant which enhances the entropic texture of the leaf. while the left hand side of the insides contains a folder in which to keep a leaflet in which contains all the lyrics for the songs featured on the cd as well as some entropic pieces of artwork featured in the backgrounds of the lyrics. The slipcover also uses the colours of yellow and green along with a redundant image of the artist Jack Johnson holding a guitar, which hides most of his facial features against a white background which looks like an entropic image of lined paper which gives the image a more redundant feel as compared to the entropic images we've seen previously.

Designing a Digipak: Print Research 3

There is a large notable difference between the main image of Come Around Sundown, and the other magazine advertisements I have already looked at. There are absolutely no artists featured on the front cover, only an image of a setting sun around a desert island with two large palm trees. The Colours used in the images are mostly bright red to create an summer evening atmosphere and the title of the album "Come Around Sundown" fits in perfectly with the atmosphere and feeling this image is trying to create. The position of the trees is located in the middle of the cover once again giving the image the mise-en scene formula. According to the band, Kings of Leon, this is their fifth album and is supposed to represent humanity's desire to explore more places.

Unlike the other text designs that I have been researching for my other album posts, the colour of the text doesn't really stand out as well as before due to the lighting of the sunset located on the left hand side of the image makes the white text look fuzzy. As for the text itself, like I said it is written in white text, is located at the bottom of the poster, taking up a quarter of the page and once again being written entirely in capital letters. The name of the band is located at the very top of the image at the point where the sunset sky is becoming darker. I think the reason why the band itself doesn't appear on the front cover is because this is their fifth album and that the majority of their target audience now knows what they look like, it becomes less of a necessity to show they're faces on covers all the time.

At the top of the poster, just under the name of the band there is a quote from the New York Times calling the album "The Rock Blockbuster of the New Season" and at the bottom of the page there is a logo and a small advertisement sentence for the band's website kingsofleon.com on the left hand side of the poster and on the right hand side, there is a logo for the band's recording distributor RCA. Unlike the other two independent- genre albums that i've researched which have been released recently this year, this album has been out for over two years being released on October 15th 2010 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Album on November 2011 but lost to the Muses' "Resistance".

Like the other CD's I have been researching, this cover was posted to fit on a full page of a magazine because the image size is enlarged to fit onto a full page and the advertisement details are below the albums name presented in white text which tells the audience where to buy the album and the release date.

Since the main band isn't on the front cover as the fan-groups have already been established, the target audience genres will be more tighter. Ever since they came out Kings of Loen has kept their genres the same. Their target audience have mostly been aimed at 16-32 years old although I think older people would find the cover attractive due to the relaxing mood of a sunset beach that it creates.

Desgining a Digipak: Print Research 2

The first thing to notice about the design of the advertisment for the Some Nights album by the American Independant pop band Fun, is that the background is just a redundant yellow colour with no other features unlike the Lana Del Ray Album which used real locations as backgrounds. The three artists that star on the front cover are standing at the bottom- middle of the page in a medium long 3 shot which once again sets them up in the mise-en-scene with the person standing on the left hand side of the poster holding the design for the cd while being looked at by the other two artists which connotes the sense of being popular and gives us the impression that the ablum he is holding is the product they're advertising. Another thing to note of is that although the artists themselves have been shot in black and white, their hair and their clothes have been recoloured into bright colours that will stand out in front of a bright yellow background such as blue and black which gives the album a entopic feel of coulor meeting black and white. This image should contribute to the creation of a stars images as the artists take up a fifth of the poster and the design is simple, using little colours, but is effective.

The heading font has been designed in a black colour scheme, is entirely written in capital letters and the heading is located in the middle section of the poster which reenforces the name of the album and is in large print which is supposed to catch the reading audiences attention. Like I said before, the colour black has been used as it's a colour that stands out the most in yellow. The Band's logo consistes of the word fun being wirtten in capital letters with a full stop which is their brand identity.

At the very top of the image provided, there are three star ratings from the magazines and newspapers "The Guardian" "Heat" and "The Daily Telegraph" which rate how good the album with the Guardian and Telegraph giving 4 stars out of 2 and heat giving it five stars which tells us that the critics liked it. Additional details include the logo for Atlantic Records located at the bottom right hand corner of the image and the logo for Fueled by Ramen, an American record label located on the other corner. The album was released on February 21st 2012 to generally positive reviews.

The main image provided is connoted to fit a full page of a magazine, either as the back cover or as a page image inside the magazine. The reason for this is that the album is an independent music release and is unlikely to featured in a lengthy article. The main source of the poster that I have been researching was found on the back cover of a Q magazine. I think that fans of indie pop music and young people will be tempted to buy this album as the artists are in their early 20's which young people should find appealing and the idie pop fans would appreciate the cool design of the cover with it's use of the colours yellow and black.

Designing a Digipak: Print Research 1

Firstly, the advert promoting the digipak of Lana Del Rey's Born to Die album, has been shot in a front shoulder close up of the artist's face which is located in the middle of the front cover while the left and right side of the cover are of parts of a grey building which is a good example of the mise-en scene process which sets up our artist. The layout of the lighting and backgrounds used takes place on a calm peaceful day which is ironic since judging by the title "Born to Die" and the depressed, blank expression on the artist's face, the song featured is going to be a depressing one. According to her website, One of Lana's favourite genre of music she preforms is Indie Pop and alternative hip-hop which seems to be focus of Born to Die which unlike other indie pop music backgrounds which have either been recoloured or done on a computer, this cover seems to have created from a photocopied image of Lana pasted onto the front cover of a real image of a grey building which is supposed to be seen as the type of world this cover is supposed to be in which is redundant.

On the advertisement page, all the text is in large print with the majority of the text being written in blue font colour, expect for the main heading which takes up almost a quarter of the front page in which the colour of the text is written in a white font positioned on top of the image of the sky background which is ironic as the blue text is located against Lana's white shirt. This ends up making the audience see the colour scheme of the digipak which is blue and white. As most Digipaks tend to have a colour scheme of two colours, this is a fairly basic colour scheme.

At the lower middle of the poster, there are two paragraphs highlighted by small red font text at their sides which represent the names of the newspapers "The Independent" and the "Q Magazine." The blue text next to them displays their short opinions on the album which are usually taken from an extract of the album's official review. Both The Independent and Q Magazine have given the album major positive reviews saying it's an "sensation" and "the years most eagerly awaited debut album" However according to other sites such as Slant Magazine and Rolling Stone, When the album was released on November 12th 2012, it gained mostly mixed to positive reviews, with Rolling Stone saying that although the lyrics, with their "pop-trash perversity", were the strength of the album but they criticised the fact that Del Rey had a voice that was “pinched and prim” and that she "wasn't ready to make an album yet" and The AV Club panned the album, calling it "Shallow and overwrought, with periodic echoes of Ke$ha's Valley Girl aloofness, the album lives down to the harshest preconceptions against pop music." Despite this it was major success in the music office with about 50000 copies being sold in the UK on it's release date. The size of the advertisement poster given to me is on an A3 poster with the main image taking up about three quarters of the paper. The reason for this is because the main image can be looked at as a redundant metaphor for a photograph and the white border can be seen and set up as an abstract white photo frame as if to give the image a more timeless "back in my days" feel.

Since Lana Del Ray looks close to her early to late twenties according to the front cover, it is fairly obvious that the main target audience will be young female adults aged between 18-25 years old. The main appealing elements for young adults are the facial expressions of Lana as they look sad and emotional which is something that younger women are likely to be. The blue and white text is large and would probably attract the attention of art collectors as they match both in the right backgrounds with the white text being in the blue background and the blue text in the white background.

Time Management Update

Today we have managed to film a few more scenes based on the lip-synching sections of our storyboards. Although I have been filmed all throughout the shoot so far, Toby is now the star of this section while I acted as cameraman.