Final Digipak Design

Final Magazine Advert

Digipak/Magazine Advert Design Inspiration & Creating A Brand Identity

Inspiration
After researching album covers from artists in the same genre as our artist, we have found one particular artist that we feel has an original album cover which we want to try to recreate in our own way.

The album cover for John Mayer's album 'Room For Squares' took both mine and Aaron's interest straight away as it is very original but not too much. The amount of white space means that the cover isnt too simple but matches the acoustic sound of the music on the album. We want to use the idea of having the photos that I have taken into squares or different sized sections and use the main house colours (which in this photo are earthy colours like brown and green which goes with the music as it is also natural etc) in the photograph used in different squares like on the cover to the left. We will use this type of deisgn on both or digipak and on the magazine advert and to make sure that they all link to the music video and together, the photographs that I took were on location of the filming of our video so the location and mise-en-scene match up. We will change the designs on each slightly so that they arent identical but have a similar feel.

On the front of this cover there is no industry information included, which means that it is likely to all be on the back because it would ruin the design of the cover. The only writing on the cover is the artist name and the title of the album which are both located at the top right hand cover of the cover, in a section of the photo that has been taken away so it fits in like asquare piece. As the album name is 'Room For Squares' and you can immediately link the name to the image as the image has been adpated and some pieces have been taken out so technically there is 'room for sqaures' in the design. Personally I have not yet seen an album cover with a design close to this one which is why we found it so unique.

Creating A Brand Identity
It is important that we make sure there is a link between all 3 of the products so that the audience can recognise each product and know that it is promoting our artist. To do this, when creating the two ancillary tasks I will use the following four things to link them;

House Colours;

I will use serif page plus to take exact colours from the photographs that I took from the day we filmed and use them for the tasks. The three main colours used will be yellow, blue and brown so that they match the images on the digipak and advert.

Typography;

After looking at different fonts, I have decied that I will use serif type fonts, this is because I feel that it works well with the genre and the products. The main font used will be 'Georgia', however using one font will make the products look repetitive so I will choose a variety of serif fonts to use so that the products look more interesting.

Images Used;

I have taken lots of photographs from when we filmed, for the digipak and the magazine advert so all of the images used are original and relevant to the products.

Layout And Design;

As I explained in the  text above, I plan to use the idea of an image being made into squares like John Mayer has on one of his albums, 'Room For Squares. I will change it so that the products don't look exactly the same and will vary how I use the deisgn idea so that each product has an original twist of the idea.

Magazine Adverts

As our second ancillary task we have chosen to create a magazine advert for our chosen artist to advertise their music and brand image. Before we could start designing our advert, it is important to do some research on existing magaizine adverts for artists in thesame genre as Tom Boardman, our artist. Below is the magazine advert for Ellie Goulding's album 'Lights'.

Digipaks

A digipak is a type of packaging for CDs, usually made from paperboard and in the folding style of a book. They have one or two plastic trays to hold the CD in and have a design on each side. We will be creating the design for a digipak for our artist as one of our chosen ancillary tasks.

Digipaks are one of the most recent types of packaging, only coming about in the 2000's. However, they are not used as regularly as the plastic jewl cases plainly because they are more expensive, do not last as long and are not as hard-wearing. Most digipaks that are created tend to be used for special edition CD's which means that they can also fit more information about the artist on so if used for a greatist hits CD for example, the buyer could read about the artist's history more than they could with a normal CD case.

In creating a digipak for our artist we will be able to use photographs and text to almost show off our artist and advertise their image in as interesting way as possible. We will be using Serif Page Plus to do this, so that we can take advantage of the software and use it creatively. We will make sure that it links to the magazine advert we are also making and the music video itself so that the artists brand identity is seen throughout all of the products and advertising that we are making.

There are different types of digipaks, for our ancillary task we have chosen to design a digipak with four sides like the one in the bottom of the photograph, this is because as our target audience is younger we feel that whilst they would like to find out information about the artist inside and see pictures that they will be more interested in the actual music so doing a digipak with a smaller amount of sides would be a better idea.

Lighting & Photographs

As we were so unfortunate with our lighting the first time round, when we filmed the second time we make sure that we had a different type of lighting to light up the barn. Luckily, we managed to get hold of two flood lights which lit up the barn perfectly which meant that as well as filming, we were able to take good quality photos for our ancillary tasks. Below is a selection of some of the photographs that I took of our artist in the haybarn.

Re-filming

Unfortunately, when we uploaded our footage the lighting was very poor which meant that you could not see our artist or the location very well. By filming later on in the year we are challenged by the light as it gets dark very quickly and as we have to film after school we will be rushed for time. However, as we have filmed before we will know exactly what we want to be filmed and wont need to experiment with angles as much because we know what worked well from last time. It also gives us the chance to film the footage of a better quality and film any extra bits that we didnt last time. We will also take this chance to take photographs of the boys for our ancillary tasks.

Below is our new shooting schedule.

Final Storyboard

Above is our final storyboard, due to the change of location if was important that we made it clear in this storyboard. The storyline of our performance based video has not changed much apart from the fact that there will no longer be a girl in the video and we will only be filming in the one location. As we are limited to one location we will use creative shots and editing to make sure that the video does not get boring.

Shooting Schedule

Above is our original shooting schedule, we planned to film on the 18th October but it was pouring with rain which meant that it was too wet to film and it would of been a waste of our time and our artist's time. Therefore, we filmed on the 19th October instead, the weather was still wet however we managed to find a change of location which was different and under cover.

Brand Identity

Paolo Nutini is an artist in the same genre as our artist, he plays mainly acoustic music and has the same target audience as who we are aiming our products and music at.

There are three main ways that his music is advertised, on his website, in shops and on tv. After looking at his website recently, I noticed that the font type of the album cover matches the font on the website which creates an automatic link between the two and also makes the website up to date with Paolo as it almost makes you notice the new album. The wooden picture frame shown on the cartoon image on the front of the album matches the six different pictrue frames on the website which move when your mosue is near them. It means that the whole time you are on the website, you are reminded of the album and his music.
I couldnt find a magazine advertisement for Paolo Nutini, for any of his albums, but I did however see a television advert for the album 'Sunny Side Up' which is the album that
links straight to the website as well. I think that Paolo Nutini has created a brand identity across all of the promotional medias by having them link to eachother so when each is seen by the public and fans you can tell that they are all from him and his is recognisable from it. For example if someone saw the website without his name on, they should be able to recognise that it is Paolo's from the similarity to the album cover.

Shot List

When filming our footage we made sure that we shot a variety of shots so that when we put the final footage together we had enough to choose from and could make the video as interesting and relevant to our song as possible.

The shots we shot were;
- Close up
- Medium close up
- Medium shot
- Two shot
- Medium long shot
- High angle shot
- 180 shot (did not work as well as we hoped)
- Low angle shot
- Over the shoulder shot

Our Target Audience

The target audience that we are targeting with our music video is both male and female teenagers to young adults between the ages of 16 to 24, which I would say is roughly the same target audience age for artists such as Jack Johnson and John Mayer, similar artists to ours.

It is likely that our target audience will be from any socio-economic group, and people that like listening to relaxing acoustic music, preferably at music festivals.

Camerawork and Editing

Whilst filming our footage we had to make sure that we thought about the use of shots and camera work, we also needed to think about the editing that we are going to do to the footage once we have put it on the mac computers.

Camerawork
- In most music videos, the most important thing is that the close up must predominate, this is because as the videos are watched on small screens the viewer must be able to see clearly who they are listening to. As well as that, the viewer is more likely to feel connected to the artist if they can see them for the majority of the time.

In Ellie Gouldings video for 'Starry Eyed' there are a large amount of close ups of her which lets the viewer see her and feel like they know the artist that they are watching/listening to. When filming we made sure that we got lots of close ups of both Jamie and Tom to ensure that we had enough for the video.



- We need to make sure that we create an intimacy for the viewer as we will be selling the music to them as well as the trying to sell the artist.

Editing

We will be editing our footage to create our music video on the apple mac computers in school, and whilst doing this we will need to ensure that our video s interesting and we show our knowledge of the editing that can be used in our video.

- Fast cut montage is soft transitions quickly cut together, when filming our footage we filmed different shots to use in a fast cut montage during the instrumental part to the song because otherwise the viewer may get bored or feel that the video is becoming repeatitive.

There are digital effects such as;

- Split screen
This is used a fair few times in the video for 'Bad Day' by Daniel Powter as it shows both the girl and boy in the video at the same time so that the viewer can compare how they are feeling and what they are doing. This allows the viewer to feel more involved in the actual video.

- Colourisation
There are different ways to use colourisation in music videos which could be having black and white scenes, like Beyonce in 'Put A Ring On It'. It is also possible to overexpose a shot or use tinted colouring which could be used to change the mood of a shot or to help match up any footage that was shot at different times and had a slightly differnt light.



To make sure that our video features what it needs to, in order for it to look realistic we will edit the following on the beginning of the video;
- Band/Artist Name
- Song Name
- Name Of Production Company
- Date Made

Change Of Location

On the day that we took out the camera to film, the weather took a turn for the worse and it started to rain heavily. We had thought of two other possible locations beforehand incase it was too wet to film in the field which it was on the day. We decided it was best to just change our location completely rather than waiting to see if the weather cleared up. Jamie's grandparents have a large house and and a hay barn which was covered and a perfect location as there was different heights to take shots and for the boys to sit on. Unfortunately Arthur was not available on the day, so we filmed with Tom and Jamie.

Problems With Lighting
As it was raining, and the lighting in the barn was fairly dim we thought that it would be too dark to get any good footage, however we found out that there was a light at the top of the open barn which meant that with Tom sitting at the highest point of the hay near the lighgt, it almost acted like a spotlight which worked with the performace based video.

Target Audience Feedback

In class, Aaron and I did a short presentation going over the general ideas and storyboard for our music video. Explaining the shots and location that we are planning on using to see what they thought and to listen to feedback so that we could adapt our ideas, taking into consideration what they said.

Below are some of the comments that we got back from the class after our presentation.

What works well?- 'Narrative and performace together is a good idea'
- 'Good use of shots and angles'
- 'Good exchange between scenes'
- 'Good variation of shots and angles'
- 'Great idea, very clever and original idea'
- 'Shot choice is very sensible, will work well'

- '360 shot will work well'
- 'Good location, works with music genre conventions'

- 'Good idea of having two cameras'

Even better if...- 'More editing effects'
- 'Make sure cuts dont get too fast for the video'
- 'Fast cut montage would keep it interesting'
- 'Think about colourisation'
- 'Will it work with bad weather?'
- 'More different camera angles and colourisation'
- 'Try to use Goodwin's Theory to your advantage'

After reading through the feedback and comments that we got on our music video idea, it is clear that the location was definately a good idea as it is a place that links in well with the music genre. The shots that we have thought about so far seem to be interesting and not the average ahots that are used most of th etime such as medium shot, close up etc. One of our best and most original ideas, personally I think is the idea of having two cameras and making it look like the girl is filming which seemed to go down well with our class.

It is obvious that like us, they did think however that it is impossible to plan around the weather because it could change at any second, for this reason it is even more important that we think of other places that we could use for the location. We also need to make sure that we use colourisation and editing to make sure our video is intersting, and we show our skills on the mac.

Draft Storyboard

This is our draft storyboard, please click to enlarge the photographs.

Our music video starts with the close up of a foot, which would be Tom's preferably and then as he starts to sing the camera would tilt upwards and slowly move up his body and show Tom sitting on a hay stack with his acoustic guitar singing. This would be a close up, which then moves to a medium shot so that you can start to see more of the location that he's in. When the lyrics 'look in your eyes' are sung there will be a close up of Tom's eyes and a close of the girl in our video's eyes which links in with two of Goodwin's prinicpals, the notion of looking and matching music and lyrics.

When Arthur and Jamie come into the song, the camera would then zoom out, to a long shot which would show all three of the boys playing, Tom still sitting on the hay which would make him stand out as the singer. There would then be a high angle shot of all three of the boys, the girl will be walking around, dancing slowly with the boys but they wont know she is there. She will have a camera in her hand as we want to give the idea that the girl is filming the video, not us. We will then have a 360 degree shot of the boys, girl and the location, the turn will be in time the pace of the music.

As our video is performance based we will then have different shots of each of the boys and all of them together, creating a fast cut montage. The video with a shot of the girl filming the boys, which then switches to 'her camera' and shows a close up of Tom.

Location

We have chosen to have our music video filmed in an open field, to go with the genre of our music artist. After looknig at artists in the same genre as Tom, such as Jack Johnson, we thought that a field would make it seem natural, and go with the acoustic music.

The field that we have chosen is a field in Letchworth, with sqaure bales of hay, we thought that this would be an orginal idea as the boys can play sitting on the bales, which makes the whole feel of the video very relaxed and simple.

One main issue that we have about the location is that as we only have one and it is outside, the weather will play a large part in whether we can film and when we can film. As we have to try and stick to shooting schedules, the most we can do to avoid bad weather is checking the weather forecast and hoping for the best. We did think about filming in the rain, however this would give a depressing and sad feel to the video that will be wrong for the song we are using.

Another problem that may occur is that the bales of hay will not be in the fields for much longer because of the time of the month. This means that we will have to film as soon as possible to ensure we have enough time to use the field in the video, especially if we need to go back and film for another day.

We will need to think of a 'plan b' as the weather is a problem that is more likely to occur than not or all though we are trying to be hopeful. We think that choosing another location may be necessary and so far we think that a plain, simple room or a large shed type place may work.

We found that in the daylight, if the weather is okay then the light will be perfect for shooting as it is not too dark for the camera to film.

Lyrics

Below are the lyrics for the song 'Room To Breathe' that we have chosen for our music video.
(Click the image to enlarge)

Chosen Artist

For our music video, we have chosen to use 'Tom Boardman' who is a good friend of both of ours. He plays guitar and sings, with two other friends joining in sometimes to create more of a band for some of his songs. Most of the songs he plays are originals along with a few familiar covers, and the song that we have chosen to use is called 'Room To Breathe'. Tom's music is mellow, and acoustic with a feel of music from the likes of Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz and John Mayer.

The Online Revolution

 

(Above is a printscreen of the Niz Lopi website)



Nowdays, the internet is used for a phenomenal amount of things such as advertising, buying and selling products, for both business and pleasure. This is now being used more and more to the advantage of up and coming or exisiting music artists as they can reach a whole new set of fans, from around the world who normally would never get the chance to listen to their music.

 

(Above is a printscreen of the website for the JCB song)



Niz Lopi is one of the best examples of an artist that promoted and make themselves known, entirely on the internet. Using a website called 'Monkeehub' they created a video for their song 'JCB song' and then sent it round to friends via email. Friends send the song onwards and soon enough the song made it to the number one spot in the charts the week before Christmas . The 'JCB song' managed to stay in the charts for 8 weeks and having a total of 400,00+ sales, which for a song that was only passed round from computer to computer is very impressive! The 'JCB song' has it's own website which was also created on 'Monkeehub', this means that people can find out about what goes on behind the song and it is also a clever way of marketing the band. The band also have their own website which has information about tours, and you can also purchase and listen to their music.



(Clip from Mark Ronson's album advert)



Although the internet is proving very useful for new artists and bands that want to promote their music easily and for free or a small price, for already well known existing artists that having a bigger advertising budget it may be a better idea to use other ways to promote. Artists such as Taio Cruz and Mark Ronson both have television adverts on various channels to promote their new CD's, as well as bus stop posters which are more noticable to the publicbut are more expensive.

Branding

You Me At Six is a pop/punk band from Surrey, who have had a huge amount of success in the last two years. They started off as a support band and since then have become more popular, doing gigs all around the UK, including playing at festivals such as Reading and Leeds. One of the main reasons that the band grew a large following was because of the advertising that they did when playing gigs. At each venue that they played at, there woul be merchandise available such as posters, t-shirts and badges which would immediately attract the attention of potential fans. At the beginning, as they were fairly unknown, when playing as a support band flyers would be given out in the queue for people to see when they were next playing which meant that people were more aware of who they were before they saw them play. At every venue, t-shirts and posters are available to buy, and since they have become more popular it is possible to buy badges, stickers and even scarfs which are used in offers when buying their cd. This means that their fans ar more likely to buy their music because they get free band merchandise in with the music.

Artist Album Covers

I have purposely chosen to analyse album covers of artists that are in the same genre of music of the artist that we are using for our music video. This means that when we come to making our album cover, we will have better knowledge of what should be on it.

This is Jack Johnson's album cover for 'In Between Dreams'.

The three houses colours for this cover are black, white and yellow keeping it simple as the picture is black and white, with he yellow only used as a background colour making it stand out. The colour yellow could symbolise sunshine, mellowness and happiness which links with the genre of music as Jack Johnson's songs are acoustic and relaxing to listen to. The image of the tree symbolises nature and has the connotation of the outdoors. Music which you could imagine listening to in the summer, in a field which is exactly what Jack Johnson as an artist represents

Although there is not much white space on the cover, the image takes up a large amount of room, leaving the artists name to look less significant than the picture. This has the connatation of the music being more important than the artist because the image of the man (whos is meant to be Jack Johnson) is more obvious than his name and the album title.
 The album title is 'In Between Dreams' which links in with the image on the front of the cover as I think that it looks like the tree and man are on an island. This symbolises a place that people would think of as a 'dream island' and somewhere that you can go to, to get away from everything. I think that this is what Jack Johnson wants people to feel like when listening to his music, that you can get away from everything and just listen to his music to relax.

This is the album cover for Jason Mraz's debut album 'We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things'.

The house colours for this cover are simply black and white which has the immediate connotation of being very simple. The music and songs on the album are all acoustic and easy going which links with the basic cover. The picture of the man is supposedly of Jason Mraz which looks as though is has been drawn by a child and the font also looks like it has been written by a child. This suggests that the artist is not bothered what the album looks like but is more importantly interested in people listening to his music instead.

There is a large amount of white space on the cover which makes you immediately look at the bold artist name and as there is not much going on it draws you to what the music is like rather than anything else. Having a drawn picture is a simple way of having the artist on the cover, but without having a posy photograph.

This is the cover for Paolo Nutini's album 'Sunny Side Up'.

Firstly, in contrast to the two album covers above this one is cluttered and has house colours of yellow, green, red and white which automatically looks a lot more colourful and catching for the eye when amongst other albums. Paolo's music is once again acoustic, happy and relaxing which links in which the cheerful cartoon image on the front cover. The man in the centre is Paolo, with the view outside being very sunny and picturesque. This has the connotation of happiness, which links which the songs on the album and the music videos for some of his songs which are full of people dancing and 'having a laugh'.

The album title is 'Sunny Side Up' which links to the rainbow and sunshine outside on the cover, but also expresses the saying when it is used in the kitchen. The eggs on the table link to the title as it is the saying that people say when cooking eggs.

The artist's name is clearly shown at the top of the cover which is noticeable and in white, standing out from the rest of the complex cartoon on the front.

Creating A Niche

It is very important for a new artist to make sure that they have a 'niche', something about them that makes their brand identity different from any existing artists. It is obvious that if the brand identity isn't original, people will not bother to listen to the music, even if it is the complete opposite as they will assume from first impressions that the music and whole image of the artist is the same as the previous, similar one.

Amy Winehouse is one of the most famous female artists to come up with a completely different and original brand identity to any other existing artists around. With her tattoos, well known black 'bee-hive' and head-turning voice she automatically became very popular purely because of her image.

If a new artist attempted to 'copy' a well known artist, it is likely that they will not be as popular. An example of this is the singer 'Prince', who was said to have copied Michael Jackson also he did well in his prime, the singer was never as successful.

An exception of this is rock bands as there are many bands that have the same types of songs/music and are not compared nearly as much to other similar bands. I think that this may be because the rock genre is not so much based on image, but on the actual music.

It is also possible that once you have made a name for yourself, you can sell whatever music you decide to play as your fans will follow you. A good example of an artist that continues to change her music with time is Madonna.

The indie band 'Super Furry Animals' came up with the idea of having a niche in their music video for 'Golden Retriever'. The video was concept based and used intertextuality by having the band dressed as furry animals, which had a simiarity to 'The Wombles'. The idea for the vide was very simple, but yet original.

Artist's Websites

This is the website for 'The Saturdays'.
Before even getting onto the actual website for the group, an 'enter site' page shows the dates of their new album release as well as giving you te chance to buy their new single directly from the page which means that before even getting to the website you can buy the music.
The pale green background, along with the japenese type pale pink flowers at the top of the page give the homepage a very feminine feel. It is obvious that the group is girly and without listening to the music, they are clearly a pop group. Their are many videos on the website of the girls, showing them in both perforamnces and off stage which lets you see that they are down to earth and just 'normal' girls as well as being popstars.



This is the website for 'You Me At Six'.

Firstly, all of the font and typogrpahy matches with the logo for the band, which means that although there are lots of colours and images on the website, it fits together with the image of the band. The background colour of the website is brown, which also matches the album cover background.
As soon as you get onto the page, there are five small images of the each band member and underneath is an up to date 'tweet' from their twitters, which means that they have used web 2.0 and the popularity of social networking sites to show their fans what they have been doing. To the right of the page, there is also a bit which shows tweets, comments from facebook and photos from flickr. This makes the band seem in touch with their fans and very intereactive.
There is a link at the top of the page, that takes you directly to a page of their available albums to buy, so aswell as being able to watch the band's music, from videos on the homepage, but you can buy online aswell.


This is the website for 'Susan Boyle'.
The house colours for this website are mainly black, white and gold, which gives the convotations of it being classy and sophisticated. As Susan Boyle became famous for her unattractive image at first, and not her voice it shows the complete transformation as the website is almost the complete opposite as what she was seen as before.
The image of Susan is one of the main focus points of the homepage and the gold font of her name matches with the image, and has the conotation of the writing glowing, and being very radiant which she looks like in her photograph.
Like the other websites, this page also has a link to an online store which allows fans to purchase music online, making it very up to date with time and technology. However, this is the only website that has had a flag for 38 different countries, which lets you choose your chosen language and read the website in it. This shows how worldwide the artist has become.