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.