Creation of Digipak, Advert and Final Products

Digipak 

For my digipak I wanted to do something creative with SerifDraw6 as I used it for my GCSE coursework and wanted to build upon the skills that I already had. Recently, I have been listening to a lot of indie music and noticed that several bands use old pictures from their childhoods etc as the front covers of their albums and EPs. I decided not to do this, as I wanted my artist to be able to be recognised easily to allow for the creation of a persona. However, I did use it as part of the overall aesthetic for my digipak. I also liked the style of the recent Red Velvet album cover, so I took a lot of inspiration from that as well. 

I used two old pictures that I found, one of me and my older sister skipping rocks on a beach as children, and one of my mum and uncle on the bonnet of an old car. However, as I wanted to be creative, I used the cutout tool and removed the background from these pictures, which originally looked like this:  

Then I started building up new backgrounds in layers. I started with the photo on the right, which then influenced how I created the one on the left.

I began with a picture of the sky that looked whimsical and colourful as the background, which I then also used on the panel behind the CD. Then I took the picture below and used the cutout tool to remove the sky. However, I decided that  it still wasn’t as bright or as interesting as I wanted, so I went through my camera roll for inspiration and found an image that I took in a greenhouse. I then cut out the palm leaves in the foreground and layered them on top. This use of greenery and plants would also help it to link to my front cover. Then, I cut out some images of pressed flowers like the ones on the front cover and placed them strategically onto the front cover, in the sky. As a final touch, I added a drawing of some silhouetted birds  flying away because I liked how it looked on the Red Velvet album cover. Then I added the track list in a semi-transparent box. It is very simple as I think that the background is too busy to have an overly decorative font, however it does match the font used throughout the album. As a final touch, I added a border like a polaroid picture to match the front cover, and solidify the retro aesthetic. 

I liked the way that the first picture looked with the flowers in the sky, so I took this idea and mirrored it on the second photo. First, I cut out my sister and I as well as some of the shore, but instead of layering it over the ocean, I layered it over the sky to make it look more fantastical. Then I did the same trick with the flowers, like stars. It is more simple than the first, because it is inside the digipak whereas the first image is the back cover. I then took inspiration from Lana Del Rey’s Honeymoon digital after having researched it and added some made up lyrics onto the image. 

For the front cover, I took a lot of inspiration from Lana Del Rey’s Lust For Life album with the font and also the prominence of the colour red. I thought that this would be fitting though, because of the emphasis on the red colour in the music video in order to create synergy. I also put a filter over the top of the image to make the pink colour of the flower more red so that it matched the font. I used the more decorative font for the name of the artist in order to create synergy with the print advert and make her more recognisable as a brand, and then kept a more simple font for the name of the album. This is the same on the spine, however the text is in white as the background is red. Finally, I added a border like a polaroid picture so that the text was more visible but also to create a retro feeling. This way, it also links more with the rest of the digipak’s aesthetic. 

For the other panels, I took some one of the images from the photoshoot and used this alone with the same white text and made up lyrics as are in the rest of the digipak. The final panel, I took a picture of myself and cut the background out, and then added a grainy effect to give the picture  an old feeling and match the rest of the album. I then used the same palm leaves from the front cover in the foreground and an image of lilacs in the background to match the fake lyrics.

Here is the final product:

Print Advert

I wanted to have synergy between my digital cover and the advert, so I used the picture from the front cover and the same fonts that I used on the digipak. As there are a lot of bright colours in the picture, I used white for the font. I wanted to build up her persona and brand, so I made sure that the dominant image was her face, and that the most prominent text was her name. The white border was included as well as the white line below the title of the digipak because it makes the poster look more sleek. As for the smaller font, it is the same font that I used on the album for synergy. I added some song titles that I had included on the digipak’s tracklist, and then added some institutional information in the bottom corner, as well her website and where to purchase the digipak. 

Here is the final product: