FINAL INSIDE DIGIPAK

Like the outside of the digipak, I followed a template for the inside. This can be seen below, as well as the final version of the inside of my digipak. I'm proud that I created this as well as the outside, as I feel it makes the overall CD more interesting and makes it a lot more realistic (you don't buy an album without a lyric book or CD in do you?)

Being able to incorporate a frame into my work was something I was most pleased with, as it was something that I really wanted to do, but didn't achieve with my front cover. It adds another vintage twist on the album and also showcases my artist, who before this image had not been seen. This adds another layer to his 'image' as an artist, and puts his face out there as well as his name and music.

*click to enlarge*

INSIDE DIGIPAK - right side

Now that I have the left side of the inside cover completed, I need to start work on the right. Obviously this is where the CD will sit, so I couldn't make it as detailed as the left side as it wouldn't be seen. Because of this, I decided to design the actual CD skin that will go on the disc. Typically a CD skin would have the album and artist name, so that when it's separated from the cover it is still distinctly obvious who the CD is by.

At first I thought I wanted to use the wallpaper from the front and back covers for on the disc, to keep it in consistency with the overall 'look' of the digipak, so using a photograph of a blank disc I had at home, I overlaid the image of the edited wallpaper onto the disc to give this effect;

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The first disc to the right shows the wallpaper image overlaid onto the basic image of the disc, giving a subtle hint of the damask wallpaper pattern through the rainbow reflections that have been caught in the image. I was quite pleased with the way this turned out as it was very simple to do, however I did try darkening the image to make the pattern a lot clearer, which is the image that can be seen to the left. Looking at both of them together I personally prefer the first image, with its lighter appearance and much more muted use of the pattern, however I feel that the bold contrast and dark colour pallet of the second disc would fit my digipak much more, being in consistency with the dark wallpaper pattern on the front and back covers.

The two images I have created have some similarities to the Foo Fighters' live acoustic album Skin and Bones which uses a similar wallpaper type design to my attempt. Obviously the colour scheme is very different to my own, however this album was released in 2006, so I feel that this proves that my theme is universalistic and doesn't ever really go 'out of date'. It has remained popular in the 2000s, having been brought back in a vintage fashion to appeal to a young audience. A band as worldwide as the Foo Fighters also gives me confidence that if my CD was put on sale, that it would be successful with my target audience and hopefully a wider demographic. 

I chose to use the same image as the left side of the inside digipak, which was the darkish-cream background with added noise to make it look grainy and old. This was perfect as it matched the opposite side and is a simple image to go behind the disc tray. For the disc tray I added a few different vector shapes, such as the black spine and some small grey half moons to both the top and the bottom to make it look as realistic as possible. The image to the right shows the final template, ready for the disc to be added. I decided that I didn't really like the wallpaper-screened disc, so I decided to create a simple disc skin design.

Using the same murky green that I have used throughout the digipak, I created a vector circle and added a realistic version of the inside of a disc. I then created another vector circle in the very dark purple shade that I have used for all of the text on my digipak, and faded it so that it can only be seen slightly around the edge of the disc. This makes the round image look 3D, which is an effect that I quite like. I then added the album title in the same font, Nueva Std, and a small version of the record label underneath that. I much prefer this simple design to the somewhat "OTT" wallpaper designs. It fits the overall mood/look of the digipak and adds to the other elements to create a document that gives the artist a strong image and recognisable advertisement campaign.

INSIDE DIGIPAK - left side

As well as the outside digipak, I decided that I wanted to make an inside digipak as well. In a CD box, this would typically consist of the back of a lyric book and the disc tray. I didn't want to create a full lyric book, so I just decided that it would act as a sort of hand out, with the cover design on the front and the design I was to create on the back. I really wanted to somehow incorporate frames into my work, which is something that I had proposed to do but couldn't include on my cover.

To start my inside digipak off off, I started to create the inside left page. I wanted it to have the same background as the back of the front cover, so I used the same technique as I did for the spine: using the Rectangular Marquee Tool to take a section of the cream (with noise) background from the back of the CD cover. I replicated this section to cover the specific dimensions and then added the same murky green border to keep consistent with the front and back covers. I then decided that I would use this new image for both sides of the inside digipak, as the right side will need a background to go behind the image of the disk.

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Knowing that I wanted to incorporate a frame into this side of the inside digipak, I decided that I would use it to frame an image of my artist, as I haven't used an obvious image of him on the cover. Doing this would make it look like a portrait hanging on a wall, which ties in with my idea of bringing private events into the public sphere.

This is the image that I chose to have in the frame. Initially taken with no intention of being used on my work, it had previously been edited and cropped using the smart phone app Instagram. This simple filter altered the exposure and saturation of the image, giving it a higher exposure and fairly dark and muted colour scheme. It is of my main character which will correspond with his dominant feature in my video, giving him a clear identity as an artist. He is seen to be wearing a checked shirt and 'BOY London' t-shirt, a make that is very popular with my target audience and the current fashion.



The image above shows Rihanna and Jessie J both wearing BOY London products, endorsing the make and also encouraging my target audience of teenagers to buy the products. Having my main character wearing this t-shirt on the image instantly links him to the current fashion trends of my Alternative/Indie audience and in some ways initiates him into that group, as fashion is one of the biggest cultural indicators used to identify young people in certain subcultures.

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This is the image of Jonny in the frame, without any further editing. The frame that I chose is a traditional square shape with intricate gold detail which fits with my vintage theme, as many young people buy frames from popular outlets such as Urban Outfitters to hang around their room. 



The colours of the image above were not what I wanted at all; they were far too bright and the gold of the frame contrasted terribly with the yellowish hue of Jonny's skin. Therefore I edited this image on photoshop to give it a much more muted colour scheme that would tie it in with the front of the CD cover and the time of day that I planned to film my video in.

This is the revised image, which as you can see has a considerably darker and more mysterious look to it, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve. In my opinion, any teenager with any style would instantly recognise this image as being 'indie', with the hairstyle of the model, the clothes he is wearing, the use of a frame and the colour scheme. I'm happy that I got to incorporate a frame into my CD somehow, as it was something that I really wanted to do and knew that it would help me achieve the professional cover that would appeal to my Alternative/Indie audience.

To make it look more realistic I added a frame hanger which I merged with the image and frame layers. I then added a slight drop shadow at a narrow angle to these three recently merged layers to make the frame look as if it was really hanging and casting a slight shadow onto the wall. The image above shows how the frame looked against the cream background. Although I did like how this looked, I felt that having the frame centred and the only item on the page made it look more like a simplistic front cover rather than the inside of the digipak. When I compared this to my existing front cover, it looked like they should have been swapped over, which I really didn't want to do. Because of this, I decided to add another frame to this page, to make it look like a real wall that had more frames on it of all different shapes and sizes, just like the back cover of Pararmore's album 'Brand New Eyes':

For the other frame, I decided that I would want to use a round frame to differentiate it from the other. I knew that using another image of the artist would confuse the page and make it messy, so I decided that I would simply use a small cut out of the wallpaper design to tie it all in and keep the artists identity solid. I feel that this idea was a success, as it looks simple and doesn't take the attention away from the image of the artist. Once this frame was finished, I placed it onto the main image and added the exact same shadow. This was because if the light was realistically shining on these two frames creating a shadow, they would appear to be virtually the same.

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This is the final version of the inside left of the CD digipak. It features two frames, one with an image of my album artist, and the other with a small section of the wallpaper used on the front cover. Because I haven't used my artist's image on the front cover, I'm really pleased that I got a chance to use it, as before this the artist didn't have an identity, and new audiences wouldn't have a clue what he looks like.

CREATING A PROFESSIONAL DIGIPAK

Now that I have the front and the back of my CD cover, I need to bring them together into a digipak. This is basically the CD cover 'skin' that when laid out flat looks like the image below, so when folded into a CD box would fit perfectly. Whilst creating the back and front of my cover, I kept referring back to this template to ensure that I was leaving enough room for the bleed and also for the final cut, to ensure that none of my imporant content would get cut off.

Creating this digipak was just a case of flattening the front and the back Photoshop documents, and placing them into the digipak template. I then had to create a spine for the cover, which I did by opening the unflattened version of the back cover, using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to select a thin rectangle of the cream background and drag that layer onto the digipak. I rotated this layer to make it vertical, and then placed it behind the front and back images to fill the spine area. Next, I used the text tool to replicate my album name and artists name in the same dark indigo colour that I have used throughout each document. I made the album title bold to differentiate it from the artist's name, and I have also placed a very small version of my record label logo at the bottom of the spine to balance it out and give further advertisement to the label.

THE FINAL PRODUCT

FINAL BACK COVER

As proposed, I have reduced the point size of the track list, making it smaller and ensuring that it 'fits' the layout of the image more successfully than it had previously. Overall, I am really pleased with the outcome, as I feel that it is a believable cover that incorporates both creative and practical elements of a CD cover with the end product being a professional cover that will hopefully appeal to the needs of my target audience and sell successfully. Along with the front of my CD cover, I feel that I have created a CD cover that is relevant to my video concept and compliments the artist as an advertising campaign. Now I need to add the two sides to a digipak template and also create a spine for the cover.

*click to enlarge*



ADDING THE TRACKLIST

Like any CD covers, I needed to add a track list to this album. At first, I was undecided as to whether I would make this a single, an EP or a full album. I decided to create both a single and a full album to see which I preferred.

Using the same font as on the front cover ('Nueva Std') I made up 11 track names which are a combination of some of my favourite songs and names that I felt fit the 'vibe' of the album and also the genre of the artist. I feel that the track names are very important in shaping an artist's identity, as they can help the audience assume which music genre the artsit belongs to. For example, an artist such as Rita Ora has tracks called 'Party and Bullshit' and 'Radioactive', which fit her genre of music and her vibrant, energetic pop/RnB image. My track names are as follows:

1. Let Me Go
2. Wake Up
3. Run
4. All I Wanted
5. Don't Tell Me
6. Spring
7. Paris
8. Tomorrow
9. Turn Around
10. Sonic
11. Halcyon

As shown in the previous post, I really liked the arrangement of the tracklist on the Two Door Cinema Club album cover, so I decided to arrange my track list in a similar way. I have taken inspiration from the smaller track numbers and the centre allignment to create my FULL ALBUM tracklist as shown below.

Here is my tracklist on the back of the image, alongside my formalities such as the barcode and the record label logo. I'm really happy with how it turned out, with the numbers smaller than the names and having it centre alligned makes it look neat and symmetrical. However, I feel that the size of the font on this image is far too big, so for my final cover I intend to make it considerably smaller as I feel that this will look better and won't over power the page as much.

As an alternative, I also created a smaller tracklist like that of a single, rather than a full album to see which one I most preferred. On a single you typically see the track that the single is for, another track that can be expected to be seen on the up coming album, and perhaps a remix or alternative version of the main track. For that reason, I have included the track that is the name of the album (Let Me Go), a second track called 'Wake Up' and an acoustic version of the main track. I'm glad that I made this alternative version, as it made me realise that the full album version is definitely the one I most prefer, as the text on the single version looks 'stuck on' and doesn't fit in with the overall image. I know that the album version is the one that I want to hand in as my final coursework piece.

INSPIRATIONAL TEXT - back of CD cover

I recently bought Two Door Cinema Club's latest album 'Beacon', and as well as enjoying the music, I also really like the cover. It has a very retro theme to it in general, but it was actually the back of the cover that relates more to my concept. The colour palet is very sullen and incorporates the dingey green/blue colour that I have gone for on my CD cover. I reall liked the way that the track list is arranged, and plan to incorporate this into my CD cover. The thing that I found most appealing was the fact that the track numbers are much smaller than the track names, and are positioned in the top left hand corner of the end of each preceding letter, and underlined.

Unlike conventional CD covers, the track list isn't arranged in a verticle list, as at times there are more than one track on a line. This results in a small bunch of track names, which I thought looked really effective and gave some variation to the back of the CD cover, rather than just listing the tracks generically. The actual font that has been used is very similar to the one I have already used and have chosen to use for the track list, reassuring me that this layout could possibly work for me and create a successful and hopefully attractive CD cover.

ADDING THE FORMALITIES - back

Now that my front cover was finished, I could start work on my back cover. Using the techniques I used on my second test piece, I had added the noise to the back cover in order to make it look old and worn. It also made it look slightly darker as well, which I was pleased about as without the noise the image was too bright.



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As on all back CD covers, there were a few things that I knew I had to include. These were a track list, a barcode, a record label (name and logo) and copyright information. Without these things the cover wouldn't look realistic, taking away from the success of the overall digipak, which is something that I didn't want to happen.

BARCODE

As a staple for a CD cover, I have included a barcode. I feel that this adds to the realism of the piece and ensures that it looks professional. I decided to place the barcode in a similar place as all of the other album covers I've looked at; the bottom left underneath the strip of pattern. This left me plenty of room to fit in everything else that is required on a back cover.

RECORD LABEL

When looking at my own CDs for inspiration, I noticed that each of them included a logo of the record label that the artist is signed to. Knowing that I couldn't use pre existing images on my cover for copyright reasons, I decided to design my own record label logo for use on the back of the CD cover, as well as the spine, the disc and the magazine advertisement. I wanted it to be a simple design, such as the Island Records logo. This was a logo that I actually took a lot of inspiration from, as I noticed on one of my own CDs that although it may appear its traditional yellow sun with a black palm tree on some covers, it was actually a black sun with a transparent palm tree, allowing the red colour of the background to come through the pattern. I really liked the effect and decdided that that was what I wanted to create.

The name of my record label was quite easy to come up with, as I simply used my own initials, 'GH' and added 'Records' to the end of that. I feel that it sounds professional, as many businesses simply make use of their founder's initials for their company name. Using Photoshop I drew a simple vector circle and coloured it black. In then removed a section of the bottom of the circle where I then placed the word "RECORDS". I used a very simple typeface called 'Orator Std' which I had used on previous pieces of work and liked how it looked. I then added another text layer and using a second quite well known typeface called 'Broadway' to type the lower case letter 'g h' and fill them with white. I altered the point size so that the sides of the letters spilled over the edges of the circle, making the letters look like they had been cut out. As a final touch I added a trademark symbol which, like the barcode, adds a sense of realism to the cover and makes it looks professional.

I realised that I may want to have the record label logo the same colour as the text on my cover, so using the dropped tool I took the same shade of blue/purple from the text on my front cover and used it to fill my logo, giving me the choice between the two when it came to putting them onto my back cover.

OWNERSHIP AND COPYRIGHT INFO

Another crucial thing that I knew I needed to put on the back of my CD cover was a small paragraph detailing the copyright and ownership information of my CD. This, again like the barcode and record label logo, gives the album cover a formality and makes it more realistic. I basically just looked at what is included on the CD covers that I have at home, and tried to replicate that using my record company name. I used both the copyright symbol (C) and the sound recording copright symbol (P) to meet all of the expectations of a CD cover's copyright protection. This was the final paragraph:

Adding all of these elements together on the back of my CD cover gave this end result:

I'm pleased with how all of the items came together to give me a professional 'formalities' section of my CD cover, making it look not only as realistic as the albums I own, but making it look believable as a professional CD cover that ticks all of the boxes.

FINAL FRONT COVER

After the experimentations and alterations that I made (as shown in the previous post), the image above shows my final front CD cover. I'm really pleased with how this turned out in the end as I feel it looks professional and crisp, and fits in very well with my video concept, ensuring that I will hopefully have a strong advertising campaign to accompany the actual final product of the music video.

*click to enlarge*

 

ADDING TEXT

At first, I thought that I definitely wanted to keep the text the same as on my previous test piece as shown below, using a modern serif typeface called 'Nueva Std'. As previously mentioned, I feel that this font is exactly what I was looking for; a serif font that is formal, but not too formal and as regocnisable as Times New Roman.

Obviously I coloured the text on my previous attempt to match the pallet of the image, so I had to choose a colour that I felt matched my new colour scheme. I knew that I needed a dark colour to contrast against the pale cream 'ripped' area where I would place the text. Using the colour dropper tool I chose a dark indigo shade from one of the darker areas of the pattern. I typed out the same text where the album title was a bigger point size than the name of the artist;

LET ME GO

JONATHAN GRAY

Similar to my first attempt, I wanted to have the top of the letters on the smaller artist name touching the bottom of the letters on the larger album title. Having the two touching meant that I eliminated any uneccessary white space between the two pieces of text, and also meant that it had a much more professional look, as shown below.

The next step was deciding where to place the text. Like on my test piece, I originally thought that I wanted to left allign the text, however I didn't want to dive straight into this in case I preferred a different arrangement. I decided to try positioning these text layers in the centre of the white ripped strip, with the smaller artist name alligning directly in the centre of the larger artist name.

FONT CENTRED

As you can see, the shape of the rip meant that the text was either covered by the pattern or was surrounded by too much white space. The letters NATH over lapped with the pattern slightly too much on the artist's name, meanwhile the letters E and G on the album title were too far away from the pattern, creating dead space which gave the image and overall unprofessional look, like the text had just been slapped there without any consideration as to the aesthetics of the whole cover.



TIMES NEW ROMAN

Having not tried any other fonts properly, I decided to see what Times New Roman would look like as my chosen font, just in case I preferred it more that the font I originally chose. I didn't want to use that font on my final piece having not tried any others, as I felt I may be limiting myself to posibilities for a better cover. The image to the right shows my cover with Times New Roman as the main font, and personally I really don't like how it looks. The letters are far too wide when enlarged to that size, and the typeface in general is too "boring" and well known. This has made me much more confident that my choice of typeface was the right one, and that I shouldn't change it.

CD COVER DEVELOPMENTS - front

Now that I had the basic layout for the front and the back of the CD cover I could start properly editing them further on Photoshop. Although I was much happier with the blue/green colour scheme, I still wanted it to be darker and with more contrast, therefore I decreased the brightness and increased the contrast. I then altered the exposure of the image, the end products of which can been seen below.

I was really pleased with the end result of the various edits I made, as I felt that this much darker colour scheme was on the whole better for my CD cover, and matched my video concept much more. The pattern was made much darker which heightened the contrast between itself and the background of the image, meanwhile the image was also contrasting with the white space created by the rip which I thought emphasised the ripped effect and added to the 'old' look.

The next step I took was to repeat the processes that I used to make my previous test piece look vintage. This involved:

• Increasing the size of the canvas to create a border which I filled with a dark, murky green and burnt the edges to make it look worn. 
• Adding noise to the image to give it an old and grainy effect.
• Adding a new noise layer and using the magic wand tool to remove most of the layer to leave behind larger grainy spots that made the image look old and worn.
• Creating a clipping mask for the new layers so they didn't alter the appearance of the border.

Now that I had the final image for my cover (the ripped wallpaper with old/aged effects) I now had to add the text.

FINAL COVER ATTEMPT

ORIGINAL WALLPAPER SAMPLE            EDITED VERSION - GREEN

The image above shows the wallpaper sample that I got from Homebase, along with various other prints. This is the one that I most preferred, as the pattern was bold and contrasted well with the background. I also really liked how the flash had lit up the wallpaper, and exposed the slight ripples, making it look like it was warping off a wall, fitting into my 'worn/old' theme. The original colour scheme wasn't really what I was looking for, so I opened the JPEG file onto Photoshop and edited the colours to a muted blue/green colour scheme, as I proposed in my mood board.

I then preceded to crop the image down to the right size for a CD cover, ensuring that I retained most of the larger area of the pattern towards the left of the image. Now that the file was the right dimensions I could add the rip to the bottom of the image and chose a colour to fill the white space. As shown below, I was able to create the same ripped effect as I did on my test piece which I was really pleased about. I filled this with an off-white/cream colour as I felt that it best suited the colour scheme at that point and created the best contrast with the image.

Knowing that I had to create both a front cover and a back cover for my CD, I decided that having the back as an inverted version of the front would be quite effective. To do this I just had to take the original image (edited and cropped) and use the ripped brush too to remove a larger area than before, leaving on a small strip of the pattern left where it would have been on the front cover. These were the results for the front and the back;

FRONT COVER

BACK COVER

EVIDENCE OF MY CONCEPT IN POPULAR CULTURE

The images below show a fashion article in a free magazine from the popular fashion retailer River Island, which was displaying party wear for the Christmas/New Year period. This article caught my eye because of its art direction that included some of the things that I am including in my CD cover and magazine advertisement. These are the damask wallpaper design that can be seen in the top right image on the fabric of the sofa, and the actual wallpaper on the bottom right image. These images are all from the same article which had very vintage sets and props, including frames. Frames were obviously something that I proposed to include in my advertisement pieces, and maybe even in my video if I can find some way to incorporate them.

These are examples of clothing that I found in the fashion retailer Next, which both fit in with my concept. The print on the shirt depicts a forrest, which is the location that I plan to film my video in, and the second's print (like the River Island fashion spread) is the damask wallpaper print that I am using for my album cover and advertisement.

 

These images are proof that some of the aspects of my concept are popular in the current trends and fashions and are included in the magazines and clothes that my target audience are exposed to. I hope that this will ensure that I can successfully appeal to my target audience.