Digipak mock up research

Further research 

Although Mary pointed out  that to do a colourful video and then a not colourful Digipak is unusual, I looked at Rita Oras album cover and found she did the same thing. Although the music video was very colourful, as are most her music videos, the album cover colour scheme is black white and red. I also found that the main image on the album cover seems to be a still from the same shoot as her video 'hot right now' which is her biggest song on the album. I noticed her make-up, hair and jewellery were exactly the same in both images.

This is the image used on the album cover

These two are from the official music video, as you can see the make up, hair and jewellery are the same. The jewellery on her hand is especially notable.

These are images from a behind the scenes video for this music video. We get a better look at her make up and hair.

Teacher feedback on Digipak mock up

Mary's feedback on my Digipak mock up

Mary pointed out that i had followed the conventions of a Digipak, my album title was smaller than the artists name, I'd used only one font throughout, my track listings were in the right place etc. 

Mary said she liked the types of images used, but agreed with me that i should take new ones. Especially as although the artist smoking has been a big feature in our music video and is part of the artists image, it would restrict the target audience massively. 

Mary also highlighted that the music video was very colourful however my colour scheme for the Digipak was black and white.  She said althought it worked really well, it was unusual. Most artist's album covers are in some relation to the biggest record off the albums music video.

My Digipak Mock up

My Digipak Mock up

This is a basic idea of what my Digipak will look like. I've decided to do a 2 panel pack. My colour scheme will be black and white however there will be some colour incorporated in the final piece. Also i will be taking new pictures, as these are grabs from my music video that i don't feel satisfied with.

 Album Back cover       Album Front Cover

                                               Inside left panel          Inside right panel

Planning Ancillary products: Marys feedback on Digipak Mockup

My teacher Mary had a look at my Digipak mockup and she likes the concept so far. She likes the font and that I have followed the conventions of having the artist name be bigger than the albums name, and that the colour of the writing is continuous in my digipak.

Mary also liked the images that I used; they stayed with the theme and did not contrast from one another but worked well and created a continuous theme for the digipak. Also, Mary likes the camera shot type that I chose for the album cover which is a picture of the artist at a mid close up of the artists face.  Also, the track listing writing is propped against the wall of the image which Mary found very effective.

The only thing Mary suggests is that on the spine I need a record label logo and the artists name.

Feedback of my digipack mockup from Mary

Marys feedback

Here are the following things she mentioned:

• I liked the image over the 2 panels

• Fonts are consistent

• Need to change front panel, as the image with the cigarette will not attract a wide range of audience just people over 18. 

• When choosing the new image use the same distant shot

Things to work on she advised:

• Back panel a few things are missing and you should put the following: missing record label company logo, legal, etc.

• Spine of the panels add album name, artist, catalogue number and may choose to put the record company.

Audience Feedback on Music Video

On Tuesday 18th December, we went to go watch our music videos on the big screen; at the cinema called Screen on the Green. After the showing was finished I went out and got some feedback from A2 media students about what they thought of my music video:

Digipak Mockup

This is the front cover and back

This part is where the CD will be placed

Planning Ancillary products: Digipak Mockup

Planning Ancillary products: Photos considered for use in Digipak and Advertisement

There are two different solid styles that I have being considering for my digipak and advertisement:



 The first style I considered is very bright and loud in the sense that there is a lot of colour and attitude in the pictures which I feel would reflect upon our artists personality and genre very well. However, I felt that it may be difficult to do in the digipak as it would be hard finding a font and colour that is not overwhelmed or underwhelmed by all the different colours; which also do not match the 3 colour scheme typical of a digipak. The above images I picked out of a dozen as I feel they were the best; I particularly like the image of just the background without the artist in it as it would be a good picture to use for the tracklist panel on the back.




The second style I considered is very natural and bright. which would make working with a two colour scheme very easy as there is a variety of colour to choose from to match the images but the images are not too flashy and bright that they will overwhelm the font and colour. I had several other images that i would have preferred to use over these but they will be caught of the actual music video as I am looking for many close ups of the artist in this costume attire.

Planning Ancillary products: Do's and Don't of Design work

Researching Ancillary Products: Three Magazine Advertisement

Magazine Advertisements

To get an idea of the way artists advertise their Albums/Digipaks/Tours i looked through Uncut Magazine. In the magazine i found three examples- One of tour dates, which can be featured in a Digipak, the second of a DVD Digipak rather than a CD one, and a full Digipak.

This is an example of an advertisement for tour dates of a band. The headlining band is the brightest font on the page and is the biggest, thus standing out and attracting the audience, the second act in underneath and the third featuring act is under that. The advertisement is brightly coloured and eye catching.

This is an advertisement for a dvd based Digipak promoting a band. The advertisement consists of images from the Digipak, the bands Logo, and the products themselves. I also noted that underneath it has promoted itself as 'Access all areas' which is appealing to the audience as it provides them with more. I also noted that they advertised where it could be purchased from underneath.

This is an example of the kind of Digipak we will be producing in class. It's a CD Digipak for Elvis. It promotes the Digipak as 'Live, Unseen and Remastered' which again is appealing to the audience as it offers them bonus things to what they may get from a simple download. Again the advertisement has pictures of the product itself, the Elvis logo, and underneath highlights amazon.co.uk and a place to purchase it.

Magazine Advertisements of CD's and Digipaks

Here are a few CD and digipak advertisements I have found in random magazines, all these are advertised in different ways and take up an entire page of the magazine. Some  are simple and clear to read, others are more complex and designed in a way to attract the audiences eye more than others. The Beetles cover is very clear and easy to read as they have used large fonts to write the artist name as that is the key seller if people want to buy the CD or digipak. Others have used a variety of colour to advertise there artist and variety of pictures.

Researching Ancillary products: Analysis of three magazine advertisements

To get a better idea of how digipaks are advertised I have looked at three different CD advertisements in two different magazines to get a better idea as you cannot find a good CD magazine advertisement online as it will only direct you to media students work so I have taken the liberty of looking through magazines to get a better idea. 

In the KERRANG magazine I found:

LED ZEPPELIN - CELEBRATION DAY 

The chosen colours would all contrast normally but here they have being made to blend together really well, creating this impressive image of the Big Ben and the River Thames. The font is simple and the text simply says the name of the album. This advertisement is my favourite as the simplicity of it makes it more effective and stand out.

                                                   In the UNCUT magazine I found:

RICHARD HOWLEY - STANDING OF THE SKYS EDGE

The advertisement for the CD is very simple; it has an image of the artist standing in an above camera shot with an impressive sky behind him. The font of the writing is the same, as is the colour, which is white. Below the advertisement is an image of what the album looks like.

                                NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE - PSYCHEDELIC PILL

This advertisement is quite irregular as it does not have an image of the artist or band as it usually would. Instead, it has the actual image of the album blown up to fill the page. It is very simple and the sticks to the usual 3 colour maximum rule that you would see with CD's; all of the writing is black and the fonts are the same except for the date the album is going to be released.

Analysis of three digipacks that relate to my genre

 Here is Rihanna's digipak, I have chosen this specific digipak as it's similar to my genre type music as her music is majority pop and has a glance of indie music inside the album aswell. This targets the similar audience that may purchase my digipack as the music the both artists do attract the young aswell as the mature audience who enjoy pop music in general.

Usher's album OMG is also designed as a digipak and his genre type of pop, RnB and Indie is also very similar to my artist genre as my artist also writes music which falls under this genre. The target audience of teenagers especially the female orientated audience is similar to ours as not many young men will listen to usher and my artist, however there are still a population of males that will actually listen to this genre and the two artists.

David Guetta's digipak is another digipak that I've chosen to analyse and compare to my one. He's genre is clearly pop and indie similar to my artists genre.  The music he writes is very jumpy and uses a lot of sound effects, and if you listen to "paper-planes" from my artists this relates very much and is a similarity that you can easily recognise whilst listening to both artists. The target audience varies with this artist as this music will be played in clubs as well as people's ipod and the audience will be young teens to young adults similar to Alexs' Tell It Like It Is.

Researching Ancillary Products: Digipaks that relate to our genre

Chase and Status - No More Idols

Straight away you can tell that the album is from an urban genre of music. You can also tell that the album hasn't been produced by an Artist selling millions of records and appealing to a worldwide audience. The style of music is more selective and alternative. The music genre is Dubstep, and although our artist hasn't been promoted as a primary Dubstep artist, they're from the same London, urban underground scene. Whereas more mainstream artists would feature themselves on the Digipak and in the music videos, this genre of music focus's more on the music itself, featuring less lyrics. The artists have chosen a picture of a bulldog as the cover and have used a simple yellow coloured font for all the writing on the cover. The background of the back cover is plain black, and the Bull Dog on the front cover is in black and white. These colours work well and cause the writing to stand out.

Rita Ora - Ora

Rita Ora is another artist alike to ours. She's more like our artist than Chase and Status. Her genre of music is Pop. Although she is a Pop music artist, she has an urban spin on her music which is what we're trying to do. The cover to this is also quite similar to the last one. The colours scheme is black and white with the colour of the font being the only colour on the cover. I've identified two fonts used, one for the artist name, track list and all other information, and the other font is used purely for the album name. The colour scheme works well on the cover, again drawing attention to it. And the use of pictures works well. Especially as the pictures on the back seem to have mostly been taken in the same shoot due to the repetition of her in the same sunglasses,

Florence and The Machine - Lungs

  This is another example of a genre of pop/alternative style music. Although Florence and The Machine is recognised worldwide, her music isn't the same as the conventional 'pop' music. Her style of music is quite free, which is conveyed in the image on the album cover, as it shows her close to nature. I've identified the use of three fonts on the cover, one for the artist name, the second for the album title and the third for the track list and other information. Again, similar to the other two covers, there isn't much colour features on the cover. The backgrounds are quite dark, with a bit of colour. On this cover the colour is used around the tree in the main image rather than in the font.

Progress Review Blog

I think our group as a whole details the research, planning and construction stages of our music video well.  I'm aware that personally i haven't blogged as much as i should have, especially in the research stage. Although i have done the research it isn't shown. In relation to the targets i set for myself in terms of blogging, i do feel i have failed to reach my target. The blog post i am most proud of is the prezi of our pitch. Although the pitch was a team effort, we'd split different parts of the pitch between the three of us. One of the parts of pitch that i did was the target audience, which received great feedback after the pitch. I wish i'd put more time and effort into most of the analytical blog posts as i don't feel i covered all of the areas necessary.

Examining previous Ancillary work

      

Here is a GIF  of the worksheet we filled in when we analyesd previous students ancillary work. We looked at advertisements and digipaks; from the good to the bad. The three I analysed were by the artists 'Poppy Power', 'Indiya' and 'Y Shocker'.

Researching Ancillary products: Introduction of Digipaks

What is a digipak:

A digipak is a modern approach to CD packaging that is usually made of cardboard, it is used to provide the target audience with a lot more information about the artist to give them some kind of insight into their lives making a stronger connection between the artist and the audience, this is really important because you need to let the audience know that you care about them otherwise they will not feel the need to but the artists album. 

What should a digipak look like:

it is important that we use a minimum of 4 panels when creating our digipak because it is important that we have enough room to get all of the information that we can on all of the different panels, the front cover is the most important because we need to inform the audience of who our new artist is, the artist name is also really important because if the audience don't know the name of the artist then it will be impossible fr them to buy the album. 

What should be included in the digipak:

• Name of artist
• Name of album
• Track listings for the album
• Production information (Copyright and Company details)
• A few thank yous
• Collage of the artist during filming
• Snippets of lyrics from the song
• Behind the scene information

Researching Ancillary products: Analysis of three digipaks

Tinie Tempah - Discovery

Straight away you can tell that this is hip hop music. The colour scheme he uses which are fairly dark colours with black and purples along with his black baseball jacket and sunglasses have connotations to rap music. 

The artists name and the album name are written with the same font and the connotations of the album name 'Disc-overy' is a pun and corresponds with the background image of stars in space.  

 The cover also features an image of the new york skyline which represents the origins of rap music and also that it is urban music. The back cover of the album features the thetrack list along with the copyright information and the record label (Parlophone). It features the running theme of the stars in space and the triangular lights similar to the front cover.

The genre is Hip/Hop/Dance music.

Marina & the diamonds - Family Jewels

This cover is like the typical album cover layout, with the two different images of the artist on the front and back cover. The front cover of the digipack is a close up of Marina's face with her long hair flowing on the floor; portraying a very glamorous image of herself. The use of photoshop, especially the posterising effect, is interesting as it gives the cover a vintage feel, along with the old style wallpaper in the background which differs to the white background on the back cover but a similar image is also shown. The fonts that are used for this digipack also gives off the vintage feeling, using a "handwritten" style font and the way they have located the title of the album and the name of the artist is very eye catching on the front cover. It is very effective how the track list meshes into how the artists hair is arranged, making it seem like the writing is supposed to naturally be positioned there.

The genre is indie/pop this can be classified due to the vintage feeling of the album, and also the use of styling of the photograph.

Calvin Harris - Family Jewels 

This 

This cover is mostly typical of the usual album layouts, however, instead of having two different images of the artist on the front and back cover, it has the same image of the artist on the front and the back of the album cover. The front cover image is more closeup and zoomed in on whilst the back cover image is more of a distance/long camera shot. There hasn't being a very obvious use of photoshop; the images are natural and look unedited rather then using the typical blurring, colour effects and special effects it has kept the front and back covers very natural looking which ties into the artists music type. The fonts that are also used for this digipak are very simple, only one font is used, which is, white throughout the whole digipak. It is very effective how all the colours in the digipark match the colours of the actual image, which means everything blends really well and nothing contrasts too much or dramatically.

The genre is House/Electro pop, which does not really match the digipak but the artist himself it does so it is still effective.

These three digipaks relate to my artist because the genre of music is quite similar to mine so the target audience would also be similar; they are not fixated on one genre alone and these three digipaks fall into the category of more than one genre; predominantly House/Dance and alternative, which is the music genre of our artist.

Ancillary Product Planning : Inspiration

These are all examples of album covers and will be helpful whilst making my digipack as I can useful tips whilst creating my album cover and magazine advert

Researching Ancillary products: Photoshop lesson

In today's lesson we were introduced to Photoshop and Quidbit; the two programs that we are going to be   using to design and edit our digipaks. We were given a quick tutorial on the basics, which is putting in the correct template and how to drag and edit pictures onto the template. Honestly, I struggled with using this program because I found it hard to get used to the layout and structure of the program itself plus I have never edited a picture before in my life so I found it difficult to know the basics of editing. 

Below is a screenshot of the front cover of the mock up digipak I was able to come up with; it is unfinished and very basic and unprofessional looking. By the the end of the year I hope to improve my photoshop editing skills vastly and will refer back to my first ever attempt at using photoshop and hope to see vast and great improvements.