Digipak Feedback

After completing my digi-pack and poster for my album 'For Your Love', I received feedback from my teacher and target audience.

DIGIPACK

WHAT WENT WELL 

• Subtle images that grab the attention of the audience
• Likes how i have kept the image small and not tried to fill the screen with the image like most people have.
• The direct mode of address of the singer is very strong, powerful and effective
• Excellent use of black and white colours throughout the packaging
• Recognised that this is a digipack and not just a CD
• Recognisable identity imagry such as barcodes, iTunes logo and universal logo 
• Interesting use of effects 
• Good photoshopping around the image to create black screen, but keeps glow of the fairy lights 
• Really unique and effective font. Stand out and grabs attention
• Likes how titles of songs are of different sizes- very unique

EVEN BETTER IF

• CD inner is opaque- make one solid background to show what it is

POSTER

WHAT WENT WELL

• Excellent use of image and text
• Dates of digipack release are made clear
• Same font and colour scheme used throughout
• Important information is made clear to the audience by text size ect.
• Use of album cover as poster is effective as it creates a mental link between the album and the poster

EVEN BETTER IF

• You had more reviews of the album on the poster to take up the empty space near the release date of the album

Questions my teacher asked me about my Digipack and Poster

1) What media term explains the imagery of the artist looking into the camera/straight at the audience?

I used Direct Mode of Address for my images in my digipack because it was important to me that the audience felt an instant connection with the artist. I felt as if my singer (Luke) was not addressing the audience it would create a separation between the two and make it feel as if Luke did not want to connect with them and is if he thought he was 'better' than them. I asked Luke to look at the camera softly to illustrate the genre of his music through his eyes. It is an acoustic album, with mainly love music. This had to be portrayed through his body language and the fonts and styles used on my Digipack.

2) Explain what font I used- where is it from and why did you decide to use it?

I obtained my font from www.dafont.com and the name of my font is 'Blake'. I chose this font due to it not looking typically 'romantic', it can be seen as having a hard edge to it but also as being artistic. The length and skinniness of the font is almost representative of the artist himself, this also makes the font look more soft and loving. The dots inside of the letters and the dots used on letters such as 'E' or 'A' creates a harder exterior, suggesting that Lukes music is not one sided and he does have a versatile genre.

Digipak and Poster Screenshots

Back

Front

Lyric Book

CD Inner

Poster

Digipak Plan (Sketched Version)

Background will be black, with white writing.

Fairy lights around Luke and guitar

Digipak Research

As part of the marketing for my artist, we have to create a magazine advert and a CD design including a lyric book.

 Keaton Henson
Keaton Henson is an English folk rock musician, visual artist and poet from London. As a musician Henson usually sings and plays guitar. Henson suffers from serious stage fright and, as a result, he rarely plays concerts. This lack of self confidence is highly evident in Henson's album art, which rarely includes images of him. Alternatively, he uses draw/painted art, which sometimes includes a painting or drawing of himself. I feel as if this is highly effective as it allows the audience to feel as if their is some mystery about the artist. This also compliments his genre of music. However, for my album art, I would like to include an actual image of my artist. 

 James Vincent McMorrow
James Vincent McMorrow is an Irish singer and songwriter. I really like the use of transparency in his album covers. It helps join the mise en scene together and makes the image look more liquid. The use of blur and lighting in this image also creates a slightly angelic feel coming from the artist, maybe this has been done to hint the genre to the audience and to ruminate the artist himself  

 Laura Marling
Laura Beatrice Marling is a folk singer-songwriter and musician from Eversley, Hampshire, England. Similarly to Keaton Henson, Marling tends to to be in many of her album covers, she uses art as an alternative. In this album it looks more as if it could have been a photo with an edit on to make it look like a painting, or it is actually a painting. The black and white colours used in the image illustrate the raw simplicity and independence of her music. Her basic album cover also stops the audience from obsessing over artist images and makes them focus on the music.

 Tom Odell
 Thomas Peter Odell is an English singer-songwriter. He     released his debut extended play, Songs from Another Love, in 2012 and won the BRITs Critics' Choice Award in early 2013. A strong aspect of Odell's album, that none of the others i have analysed so far uses, is the use of direct mode of address. This is where the artist stares directly at the sense of the camera when the picture is being taken, to allow the audience to feel a connection with the artist. He is 'addressing' his audience with his eyes, making them feel included. I will be sure to use this in my album. The cobbled street background is also creative as it shows his heritage and nationality within the image.

Paloma Faith
Paloma Faith is a British singer, songwriter and actress, known for her retro and eccentric style. Faith released her debut album Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? in 2009. Faith has a very obvious retro feel about her and her artwork, the use of technicolour and cinematography highlights this massively. Faith also uses direct mode of address to target her audience with. The simplicity of this album is incredibly intriguing, from the use of a plain background, to the lighting around her giving her an almost halo glow around her. 

Taking Your Original images

Today I have set out to take images for my Digipack and magazine advert. I have made sure my singer/male actor has worn the same clothes as he did in the music video and I have also made him wear the fairy lights as well. This is done not only for aesthetics, but also for lighting purposes.

These are the images that I took of Luke:

I was fairly confident when taking the images that I knew what I wanted to obtain by the end. Luke has also previously done some modelling so he was very easy to instruct. I managed to take my winning shot close to the beginning.

I then moved on to the other aspects of my digipack such as the back, inner and lyric book. I decided that I would probably want to use another shot of Luke himself on the back. However, on the inner parts I would want to use objects rather than him/another person.

Images of other objects:

After taking these images I liked the idea of using the guitar images as the lyric book, as a guitar would accompany vocals, and I liked the though of using some sort of chalkboard artwork as the CD inner underneath the CD. I would want this art to look romantic and as if its personal to the singer.