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.