DIGIPAK: FINAL

After receiving some audience feedback, I changed certain things such as the position of a few shapes and images.

Somebody also pointed out that I accidentally wrote "Teenage Fantasy" on the spine instead of "Strangers". Although this is just two words different, it caused a lot of confusion since on the rest of the digipak the album it was titled differently to the spine, it didn't correlate.

Also, originally the top half of my digipak was upside down and this was because I saw an example of a real digipak which had the top like that so that when it's printed and folded, it would be in the correct position. However, to show the design on my blog it looks a lot neater when it's all the correct way up since it's easier to see and read.

Finally, part of the feedback I received was that I made a mistake in spelling "photograhy" as just "photograph" so I fixed this.

Here is my final digipak design:

DIGIPAK: PROGRESS

For the same reason as why I did it for my CD design, I decided to frequently save the progress of my digipak design. Below is the album cover and CD tray I have already designed and following that is the progress of my digipak design.

Finally, this is the draft that I'm going to send to people for audience feedback to find out on what I can improve.

DIGIPAK (CD): PROGRESS

After creating my magazine advert and album cover on "fotor", I realised that the website can freeze and crash a lot, making it very easy to lose all of my work. Because of this, I decided to save the image frequently in case if it did happen. Although there's only small changes, it still shows the progress and changes in ideas.

I then wanted to add the record label at the bottom of the CD. Originally, the "epic" record label logo I had downloaded was red but it only took me a split second to realise that a red logo on a digipak that only consisted of blue and white looked very odd. Because of this, I found another one that was white with a transparent background to fit my theme and colour scheme a lot better. 

This is the red logo I had originally and although I prefer the style and font of this one rather than the white, I couldn't find this in white so I went with the other logo.

I also then added another diagonal line in the background to match the magazine advert and the rest of the digipak that I will create soon. I also made sure that this diagonal line is at the exact same angle (16°) as the rest so that when it's all put next to each other, there's a very clear correlation and it all links up and matches.

I then decide to add another white circle around the CD to show that when the CD isn't in the packaging, there will be a plain white circle there rather than a blue background.

Here is the final CD along with the background of the CD tray. It's not the right size or shape at the moment but I will fix that once I create the full digipak as I will need it to be a size that correlates with the rest.

Although I made the album cover and the CD / CD tray separate, I think I'm going to make the other two sides all together with the four sides as I think that will be more efficient. Making all four sides separately will take a lot more time as I then have to put them all together and make sure that they're all the same size.

DIGIPAK (CD): PLAN

To make it easier when I'm designing the CD, I made a rough plan explaining my ideas on paper. However, this was before I recieved feedback on my magazine advert which said that blue looked better. Since I want to keep my digipak, magazine advert, and music video consistent, I will be using blue for that CD (and the rest of the digipak) instead of red. As stated previously, the hexadecimal number for the shade of blue I will be using is #5986BD. I have kept a note of this to make sure that there is a clear theme throughout all of my final products.

In addition to using the same colour, I will also still be using the same fonts ("Cavier Dreams" and "Rock Salt") to keep the theme going throughout ever aspect of my products.

DIGIPAK: RESEARCH

I decided to research different digipaks to get inspiration for my own and hopefully help me make mine look as professional and as realistic as possible. Here are some of my favourites:

DIGIPAK (CREDITS): RESEARCH

For my digipak, I of course wanted to make it as realistic as possible. To do this, I chose to inclulde credits to the people who worked on the album. This would include the producers, recorders, etc. which would all go inside of the digipak. I also wanted to include a small paragraph about the rights to the record label which usually goes on the back.

Here are a few examples that I found and took a picture of:

This all showed me that there are a lot of different things that I could include in this section of my digipak, but overall it has the same message. Some are also a lot shorter than others (for example, the last image shown from the album "Old Bones" - Broadside"). After reading them all as well as others that I didnt include images of, I created the following for my own digipak. I also looked at a bruno marks album since he has R&B music and my artist's music is also R&B. I wanted mine to stick to R&B genre conventions but I didn't notice anything different from his album and the ones from other artists.

This is on the back of the outside, where I'm giving credits to the record label and mentioning copyrights:

This will be the inside left (next to the CD), where I credit the people who helped create the album:

DIGIPAK: WHAT IS IT?

Before starting my media coursework this year, I've never heard of a digipak and I had no clue of what it was so I decided to research it to find out more about what I will be creating for my ancillary task.

This is what I found out:

• Made mostly from thick card, the digipak is virtually shatterproof and allows great graphic display. 
• Originally used for the album packaging of leading musicians, the digipak and digipak family are now priced reasonably enough to be used for any CD or DVD project. 
• The digipak is an extremely versatile packaging. It can be made to accommodate a booklet either by placing in a die-cut slot or gluing onto one of the panel. 
• In addition, the panels can be increased from 4 to 6, 8 or more. 
• The DVD Digipak is a popular alternative to the DVD box which is now widely used for feature film DVD releases which are special editions because it increases the value and creates a premium product. 
• CD and DVD DigiPaks make a big statement, they represent the ultimate custom packaging for your CD or DVD replication project. A DigiPak is also a more environmentally friendly option when compared with traditional plastic jewel cases or DVD cases. 
• Material: 300gsm card with matt or gloss varnish. Printed 4 colours (CMYK) or Pantone colours. Spot varnish, lamination and embossing available.

DIGIPAK (COVER): THE MAKING OF

To create the album cover for my digipak I first took a screenshot of the final music video to get the still shown below.

I decided to use a website called Fotor to edit the colours, crop it, and edit out the white line at the bottom which seemed to come from Lucy's earphones.

I then added lines around it, the album cover and artist name, and a thick border to create my final album cover. The rest of my digipak will also revolve around this image so that it all links and looks more professional.

DIGIPAK (COVER): RESEARCH

To design an album cover, I took a look at other album covers within the same genre as well as other genres to make it look as realistic as possible. Here are a few examples that I'm going to take inspiration from:

What I really like out of two of these is the thick white border around the photograph and I definitely think that this is something I will use with a screenshot from my music video.

I also noticed that it is very common to have consistency in fonts for the album title and artist name which makes it look very professional. However, there are a lot of exceptions and this includes that last image above which is the album cover for Bea Miller - "Chapter One: Blue". I have decided to go against the common convention of having only one font as I think it adds more character to an album cover so I will be using two different fonts - one for the artist name, and one for the album.

POSSIBLE RECORD LABEL

"Epic Records is an American major record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment; a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. Epic was founded predominantly as a jazz and classical music label in 1953. It later expanded its scope to include a more diverse range of musical genres, including pop, R&B, rock and hip hop. The label has released albums by popular artists including Tammy Wynette, George Michael, Lamb of God, Cheap Trick, Meat Loaf, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ted Nugent, Shakira, Sly & the Family Stone, Celine Dion, ABBA, Anastacia, Boston, Dave Clark Five, Gloria Estefan, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and Michael Jackson."

I chose this record label to put on my digipak and magazine cover because it includes a variety of artists and some include ones of the same genre as Jorja Smith which is R&B. For example, Fifth Harmony and Camila Cabello both come under the "R&B" genre. This means that realistically, it is likely for Jorja Smith's record label to be Epic which makes my digipak look more realistic.