Digi Pak (CD Cover & Mag Ad)

Alongside the construction of my music video I also have been working on the ancillary tasks of a digi pack and a magazine advert. This is involved as an additional element of research and planning. Here the process of my ancillary task...

Digi Pack 
Here are a few points with regards to the aims of a CD Cover and Magazine Advertisement

Digipack Research

Here are examples of 3 album covers that I have researched and annotated in detail. It is my understanding and interpretation of how the artist and album has been presented. Although I was allowed to annotate any album covers from various genres of music, I thought it would be more appropriate to annotate album covers from artists in the same music genre; country style music. In addition, it was also a chance to get some inspiration from the same music genre album covers, in order to conform to the convention of Country Music as well as finding ways to make it different and stand from other Country style music videos. 

Analysis of Taylor Swift's 'RED'  

 Analysis of Sheryl Crow's 'Feels Like Home'

 Analysis of Carrie Underwood's 'Some Hearts'

Magazine Advertisement Research

Here are a few magazine advert's that I have annotated and described the ways in which I feel the artist has been presented as. I have picked out points about color similarities and patterns as well as texts positioning and fonts. By doing this, it has allowed me to see the pros and cons of making a music magazine advert. I had noticed the ways in which I have to pick the appropriate album color scheme which fits the artists image as well as the genre of music. I was also conscious of the costume/outfit that also had to fit to the genre of music. 

Analysis of Taylor Swift's 'RED'

Analysis of Rihanna 'Russian Roulette'

Relevance of research 

I knew that there is a need for strong close-up shots, moderately glamorous to some extent as I want to present my artist as more natural beauty rather than all glammed up and seductive (according to Andrew Goodwin's theory).

I have also noticed that I must focus on the stylistic font, relating back to the artist's character as well as the style of music as well as to ensure the font carries a similar pattern all over of the CD cover. In order to do this, I should at many different fonts that are completely different but will go together with regards to the artists image as well as the genre of the music. I also need to include symbolism and meaning of specific colors, for example the color red to represent love and romance, which will allow me to reflect on the artists style that I have constructed. 

I must consider some key layout features to an magazine music advertisement. Some of these are the following:

• To be able to sell the album, which means it must be colors that stand out (having in mind of the genre of the music, for e.g. bright colors for pop songs, or neutral colors for classical music).
• Title of the album and the name of the artist are mostly printed in big and bold font, in order to attract the attention of target audiences. 
• To include information of the album and the companies that have worked alongside the artist to create the CD etc. 
• Sometimes, the advert has a release date of the album
• Ratings from companies or news paper that allows audiences to see what known companies think of the album...simple insight of how good the artists music is.

What I plan to do

In order to take strong close-up shots, I must ensure I have a high quality camera (DSLR), which I can practice to take close-up shots, so it is less challenging for me. 

With regards to the font, I will consider to research within several font websites in order to pick out a few to ultimately choose the best pair of fonts for my album cover and magazine advertisement.

First Photo-shoot

These are a few images taken from my first photo-shoot. I have analyzed them in terms of if they were a good shot or not as well as how I wanted to use the images.

What I loved most about these images, is the location. The natural environment in greenery and natural settings is a convention of Country music videos. It also reflects on her personality and image, which is to present natural beauty. 

The biggest problem with these images was the costume. The artist was wearing a coat over the costume. Without paying any attention, I didn’t realize that it would be a problem at the end, as it was impractical and didn’t fit the convention of a Country artist/ musician. For that reason, I had to fix another day to re-shoot for the CD cover. I decided to keep the costume, however without the coat on and also a change in location - to a more unique and attractive place. 

Photoshop Changes 
These are some of the main changes I had made when creating my first draft of the CD cover and the magazine advertisement. These changes were made on Photoshop in order to be able to make my CD cover and magazine advertisement seem realistic and at the same time creative using the research I had carried out earlier. 

First Draft of Digi-Pak

Using PowerPoint I had analyzed the first draft of my CD cover, with regards to the conventions of Country music, costume, location, text etc. This helped me to find out things that I could improve and change within the CD cover images.

Second Photo-shoot

The reason why I had to re-shoot for my print tasks was all due to the artist having her coat on for the first photo-shoot. It was a little frustrating at first, because the images I took came out so well and her costume was perfect for conforming to the convention of Country music as well as Indie Pop. However, I was also relieved i one of way of having to to re-shoot because I thought of a better location that would be different and enable me to be artistic with camera shots as well as presenting her facial expressions and body language in a better way.  

 Inspiration of CD cover

Changes of Digi Pack

Here is a slideshare presentation of the changes I had made with my CD cover and Magazine advertisement - http://www.slideshare.net/amilan2307/anaylsis-of-digi-pack

Analysis of my final CD cover and Magazine Advertisement (Digi Pack)

CD cover:

Although some may say that Photoshop is more difficult than Final Cut, I think it was easier as I enjoyed editing more. This is because I was able to see the small details that I had edited each time. It took a lot of effort and time, but I managed to do everything according to the plan. It is very time consuming due to taking a quite some to fix just one small part of the image, say for example the artists eyebrows - I edited her eyebrows in every image, trying to make them look exactly the same. They are small details that took alot of time but it those small details that make the bigger picture a better one. 

I think the most stressful part of making this CD cover was doing the back cover of the CD, this was due to having to re-take a picture and then having to edit it on Photoshop all over again. However, I knew the new image for the back cover would have given me more marks and would more articulate than the first one. 

The conventions of Country music I had met was the costume (checked shirt, boots and curly hair). I knew that from research of many Country music videos, Country artists wear checked or denims shirts. Usually in Country music videos they are set in a natural location and setting like in a green area or a barn. I think both my location in reflect that to some extent. The location is unique and show elements of green (for e.g. the green leaves on the beautifully designed railings as well as the front cover of the park). 

From my research, my inspiration came from Taylor Swift's 'RED' CD cover, it fit pretty much as how I wanted to present my artist and the convention of Country music. The colors fit perfectly to how I visioned my CD cover to be, and so I went with it.

Things I could have improved on is the costume of the artist, to make it seem more Country rather than rock, however these colors reflected on the title of the album as well as the location of the railings and the artists red lips.

Overall, I believe I have put my all into this task and have tried my best to learn from my mistakes that I have made throughout the process of doing this task. However, I know there are other ways in which I can further improve the CD cover and make it seem more realistic and fit for the convention.

Magazine Advertisement:
 

I enjoyed this task the most which allowed me to complete it to a standard that I was very proud of, considering that I had edited it by myself. What I think went well with this piece is the positioning of the text especially the name of the artist and the title of the album. These ideas were taken from Taylor Swift's 'RED' magazine advert, The color coordination of the red and white fonts were taken due to being to show the same concept in terms of what the album was about. 

Another thing that I particularly liked about the advert is the image of the artist. It reflects on her personality and character. Her posture of her hands on her knees and with an innocent look on her face presents her as a humble and lovely person. This is the type of image I was able to present of my artist.

One way in which I could improve my magazine advert is by changing the size of the font of the two songs featuring in the album, in order for audience to see and familiarize themselves with a song that has won a high well known award for its music. 

One thing that I noticed with many present artists that are promoted in magazine adverts, are the icons and links they have on the advertisement. This is allow audience to be able to see more information about the album and the artist or be able to buy the album from a website. As it is a quicker way to sell albums or get people to share and look up the artists on the internet, I decided to use these icon features in my magazine asvertisement. 

Overall, I believe I have enjoyed this task more due to the pleasing outcome of it. I feel there are areas of improvement, if I had a little more time I would have been able to make more changes to it and make it seem more professional than I hope it is. 

As I know in the media business, there are more than one person for doing one specific job. However, as I was alone, doing everything in one go was a challenge and took more time and effort as it would have for someone who was in a group of three. I know that at the end of the day, I have adapted to my mistakes and produced something that I thought would be impossible for me to do at the end.