The digipak that I would be recreating as my own would be Conor Maynard's debut album 'Contrast'. The image below is what his album cover looks like, and this post will explain how I have changed it to make it my own, with original images and layouts.
I chose the above picture to use for the front cover of the digipak as it's front facing and is a CU, showing the target audience exactly who the main artist is and who's digipak they would be purchasing. The colours are already in the desaturated effect, which I quite liked the look of, so thought that this might be an interesting image to use on the front cover - the name of the album 'contrast' implying a sense of colour change. The first thing I had top do was separate Conor from the background he was against, as I wanted to make this image my own. After I had done this, I had to make a separate image and create the background for it. I decided to keep the colours of the desaturated tone and added a dissolving effect from white to grey as the background, then added Conor on top of it.
I then had to add the text of the name of the artist, in this case Conor Maynard, and then the Contrast as the name of the album. I chose to use different fonts for the album title and the artist name to make them individually stand out from one another. I made the name of the artist in an italic font as if it was t eh signature of the artist himself, and then made the album name much bolder so it caught the audiences attention. This was a very simple draft of a possible digipak front cover for this album, as shown below:
However, I didn't think this was the most creative that I could be with this album so I decided to add some different effects and play around with the colour, bringing the meaning of the title into play. I made the drop shadow of the original background larger and bolder, and added the colour of green onto it with some highlights as a contrasting background. I then felt like something else on the front cover needed some colour added, so decided to add a shadow behind the album name with the same colour. I also moved the text and the image of Conor Maynard around on the cover, enlarging the artist name so it's something the target audience doesn't miss. Here it is:
This picture shows I have played with the use of colour to make the cover stand out more than it did, but keep the use of white colour for the title to stand out against the desaturated background. To experiment other options though, I tried getting rid of the white completely and change the title to completely green to see the effect it had and the 'contrast' it made to the other colours. Here it is:
I do believe the use of colour, even used in a small quantity like above, does make a difference to how the album cover stands out and caches the audience's eyes. Also, as Conor Maynard is a pop/r&b artist, much like my own artist would be, I think it's important colour is used to give the happy impression that pop music is supposed to represent. I added the complete black and white effect again to the layout I had recreated, and still the colourful album cover stands out more.
I think the black and white effect for the whole album cover is quite depressing and might be something that the genre of indie or soul may use, whereas pop/r&b is more vibrant. From this little practice I have already realised the importance of colour use on the front cover to make it stand out, seeing as it is the first thing the audience will see when purchasing it.
After I had done this, I then went onto having a go at practising something completely different: the poster. Understanding the conventions needed for a poster, I chose this image to use as the main piece:
Originally, I was going to use this image on the back cover of the digipak as I thought it might make a good effect having the text of the tracks running down the left hand side and finishing just before his hand is there. However, I decided that I would try to use this for the poster instead as the pose that he is in can be useful here too. Again, I had to separate the image of Conor himself from the background he was against, and then choose a background myself for it to be against. As the album is called 'Contrast', I thought it might be nice to add some colour to the background, and managed to find a colourful music effect on Google Images. I only wanted the streaks of colour behind though, so had to make sure the image of Conor fitted on top of this. Also, I had to get 'Conor Maynard' from Google as well as I wanted to use the exact font that was associated with him.
This shows me removing the background from the cropped title I had taken from a previous image, filling the title in white and then individually making them brighter so they would stand out against the darker image of Conor himself.
After I had cropped this from his album, I put them all together to create the first part of an album poster. This shows just a few of the main conventions (the artist name, an image of the artist, a suitable background) and already is starting to look like a successful piece:
So far, I am very happy with what I have created and over the next week I am going to carry on trying to finish the tour poster, making some more examples of possible album covers using different images, and also create a possible CD image, inside panel and back panel for the entire album. This will ensure I know how to use Photoshop before I begin to create the final Digipak for my course work, although I already have ideas of what I want to create for my own.
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