Making the front cover!

I can now blog the process of me using photoshop to create the front cover of my Digipak. I have never made a Digipak before, however I felt prepared when I was getting started with it as I had my drawn plan to use as a guideline and I had the research I had previously used to help me.
Firstly I chose which image I wanted to use and set this as the background layer.

This screenshot shows the original image before I made any changes to it. Next I made a background copy of the image so that I could start editing it. This meant that if something went wrong with this copy I could use the old one for back up.

 

 

The picture above shows how I have edited my original image to make it suit the genre of music on the album. I planned to make this image black and white which is exactly what I have done. I also thought it would be a good idea to include the black and white effect as because the album name is linked to our music promo for 'Crash' we also used the black and white effect in some shots, I therefore thought that the viewers that have watched the video may recognise this similarity and relate the two together. If they liked the video they are likely to like the album and be interested in it.

 

 

 

The next image shows me adding the band's name. This is something that every CD case/digipak includes as it is promoting the artist. I want the target market to be able to recognise straight away who made this digipak. This is why I have placed the band's name in the top right hand corner so it is easily noticeable and readable. I have made it white so it looks nice on the black background. The screenshot below also shows the font I have used for this text.

 

 

 

The above screenshot shows the next text I added in. This is the name of the album.'Crash'. I have already stated that I have named it this as this is the track we used for our music promo and my research showed me that You Me At Six have named their other albums after songs on that album. I have placed it underneath the band's name as this again is something that many other Digipaks do. I have made it white in order to keep the same consistent house style as the other text on the page. The screenshot below again shows that I have used 'Minion Pro' for the text font. I feel that by keeping the same house style it creates a professional look. 

 



 

At first I was going to leave the final front cover as the previous screenshot of the whole page. However I thought it would be a better idea to underline the band's name to give it more important. I also liked this a lot better as it made the name stand out a lot more.



 

 The screenshot above shows what my Digipak would look like with the original image and without the black and white effect. I wanted to see which idea I would like better out of the two. I have decided that the black and white front cover looks better as it makes it look more professional and suitable to the genre of music. I feel if I kept the original image the same way as it was at the beginning this would look rather dull and boring whereas the black and white affect adds a bit more interest to it.

 

Digipak design- Drawn plan

In order to help me know how to set out my Digipak I thought it would be helpful to create a drawn plan of what I hope it will look like. I have drawn it in the format of the digipak template I have shown previously to help me identify what it would look like set out in this way. I have drawn the inside page up right so my design plan can be shown clearer.

Firstly I have shown that the disc will just be a plain black disk, it will be black so it will match the rest of the black and white theme of the Digipak.

The inside page will include a photograph of the band at the bottom. This will be a photograph of the band laughing, I thought this would be a nice picture to go with the thanks above them. I will be writing out a thanks message from each of the boys.I will have the background black so the writing will be in white so that it stands out clearly and is easily read. 

The back page will also have a black background so the writing will be in white. The list of songs will be on the right hand side of the back page as normally the songs are on the left or in the middle of You Me At Six's CD cases so I thought this would help to make mine different. This will match the style of the inside page. I will also make sure I have the same house style for these pages, this will mean that the fonts will be the same to make it look professional. I will be including the bar code at the bottom of the page as well as the Virgin records label and the copyright terms and conditions. To fill up the blank space I  will include another picture of the boys in the band. I will again try the black and white effect with this photograph as this is something I liked with the CD cases I had previously researched. I will find the bar code and the virgin record label on the internet and will blog the links from where I found these.

The front page will consist of the band's name and the name of the Digipak. Again this will be in the same font as the other two pages and will be in white in order for it to stand out and be eye-catching. I will have these underlined to make them seem important and stand out even more. A picture of the band will take up the majority of this page. Again I will edit this in black and white to match the rest of the Digipak.

I will also be creating the spine of the Digipak. This will just consist of the Band's name and the name of the Digipak. Again I will use the same font.

Band Meeting!

In order for us to be able to create our ancillary tasks we would first need photographs for these. We realised that we should have actually taken more professional looking pictures of the boys in the band on the days of the filming but we were so focused on shooting everything we needed that we forgot to do this back then. Because of this we arranged to meet up with the band in the school hall again one evening in the school week. Everyone was free to do so which meant we had no difficulty with availability. We spent around an hour with the boys taking photos. At first the boys did not cooperate very well as they found it difficult not to laugh when we were positioning them how we wanted. This meant that some photos did not come out as good as we'd hoped. Below are some of the pictures we took for our ancillary tasks, some I will use and some I will not for a number of reasons.

This was one of the first images we took of the boys whilst we were still trying to figure out how we should position them. As you can see this photo has slightly blurred which is why I will not be using this photograph for my ancillary tasks.

This photo shows how some of the boys first found it hard to act professional as you can see the band member on the far left is not being as serious as the others. Also I cannot use this image as one of the actors has his eyes closed which is something that often happens in photographs. However we did like how we positioned them in this way.

Here is a single photograph of our drum player. I plan to use this for my website as on my Digipak I just want to include photographs of all of the band together as the target audience may prefer another band members so I want them to be provided with all of the boys as individuals may have different favourites.

Next is a single shot of Sam the bass guitar player.

Next is a single shot of Matt the lead singer. I like how dark this photo came out as it fits with the genre of music. I have also identified that I like the idea of black and white for my Digipak case so this image would help me with this. However as I have stated previously that I don't want to use the single shots of the boys for my Digipak, but rather on my website.

Here is another image of Matt. We took two to ensure that if one did not come out ok we would hopefully have a back up image.

Here is another whole band photograph. I really liked how we positioned the band in this one as I thought it looked quite professional. Even though two of the band members aren't taking it as seriously as the others, we thought this was quite effective as two have serious faces whilst the other two are having 'fun'. We thought this may attract the audience more if we used this image as they could maybe see them in a different more 'fun' way. This could maybe even help the audience feel like they connect with them more. This is the image that I am planning to use on the back cover of my Digipak.

Even though this image is slightly blurred and the boys aren't being serious I really like how happy they look in the shot and the fact that they are all laughing together. I am planning to use this image on the inside cover of my Digipak with the 'thank you' messages from the boys. I feel that the image and the messages fit well together as the boys look less serious wich may attract the audience effectively as they may be able to really feel like they are connecting and relating to the boys. I feel like if I was to use a serious image of the boys it would not go as well with the pleasant messages from them.

 

Here is another image of the boys laughing. I really like this one also as it shows the other side to the boys that isn't seen in the video. I will try this one and the previous one with my Digipak to identify which one looks best when edited.

This is the last photograph of the boys that we took on this day. I again really liked how they were positioned in this way. We told the boys to make serious faces for this shot which they kind of did which worked quite well. I will plan to use this on the front cover of my Digipak as I feel they look quite professional. I also want this as the front cover as they are positioned in the same places as they were for my video which the target audince may be able to recognise.

Digipak Template!

I thought it would be useful to look at a Digipak template to show me how one would be set out properly. This would also help me to understand fully what is required of my digipak (what I need to make for it) and how this would look on a template.

The template shows what goes where. I can now identify that I need to create;

- A front Page
- A back page
- An inside page
- Spine

I will be using Photoshop to help me create all of these. I will create them separately and then maybe later will try to fit them onto this template to see exactly what my Digipak would look like in this format.

Digipak task- Research !

For one of my ancillary tasks I am required to create a Digipak for the band's album that will include the song we used for our music promo. I will be using Photoshop to help me to do this. I have used Photoshop previously so I do have some good experience with using it so hopefully will not find it too difficult to make my digipak. As I was a bit unsure with what a digipak actually looks like I decided to research existing ones from You me at six to help give me some ideas on how I should lay mine out and what I should include on it. I also wanted to search You Me At Six's other CD cases to identify the styles that have been used, this will help me set mine out using styles to help make it suitable to the genre of music the band's album contains.

You Me At Six- Sinners Never Sleep Album

The first album case I have looked at is their album 'Sinners never sleep'.

The front cover image looks like this;

This album cover only uses dark tones and colours. I like the use of this as I think it fits well with the style of music the band performs. Also fans of this kind of music can recognise this style straight away due to the colours used.This CD case does not have a picture of the band on the front which is an idea I don't really like, I feel I will change this on my digipak as I would like to include a photo of the band on the front so that the target audience can quickly recognize who the digipak was made by. However I have stated that I like the use of black and white on the image which is something I will experiment with on my Digipak. They have also named this album after one of their songs 'Sinners Never Sleep' which is another idea I like. I am going to name my digipak 'Crash' after the song we chose for our music promo. 

The back of the CD case looks like this;

Again there is good use of black and white to match the front cover. Again this is something I want to try with my Digipak. I feel it is good to make the front and back match slightly in order to make a professional looking case. You can also tell that the same font has been used for the list of songs and the 'sinners never sleep' on the front cover. Again this good use of the same house style being used makes the whole thing look more professional and well laid out. Again there is no image of the band, I will change this on mine by including one to target the audience even more by provided them with lots of images of the boys.  Like any other CD case there is the bar code. I will need to include this on mine as it is something that is required of a Digipak. There are also the copy right terms and conditions at the bottom of the case. I will use these as a guideline to help me include them on my own work. Also underneath this is the record label. Virgin records is shown here, I will be using their mark on my Digipak as it makes it seem more real as these are the record label that You Me At Six uses.

To the left is a picture of the inside contents of the CD case. This is a thank you page from the band. Each member of the band has made a message saying thanks to their family, friends fans etc. I really like this idea as I feel it really gives the fans the chance to feel like they are involved with the band as they are saying thanks to them. I will use this idea in my Digipak as I feel it is a good effective way to target the audience. It will give the idea that the band are really trying to communicate with the fans. I will do a thanks from each of the boys to make it more exiting.

Another CD case of You Me At Six's that I looked at was 'Hold me down'. Below shows an image of the front cover. 

This album cover is a lot more colourful compared to the previous. They have used a unique eye catching design. However this may be quite difficult to do as I would have to start from scratch with a design like this and I do not feel I have the skill to come up with a design in this style. I also much prefer the black and white affect as I feel it suits the indie genre better.

As I don't want to spend too much time coming up with song names to list on the back page of my digipak I have decided to mix around existing sing titles to create new ones. This will be shown later on in the process of me making my work.

Final Video!

Here is the link to our final music promo for you to watch! :)

Cheer Up clothing! - Target Audience

As I have said further down my blog that we identified that Indie scensters are highly influenced by their fashion we wanted to target them with one of the band's clothing line. We did this because the fans of You Me At Six are likely to recognise this label.

Below is a picture to show the 'Cheer Up' clothing item that Millie wore in our video.

Here is also a screenshot from our video showing the scene in which Millie wore this item of clothing.







We also identified that some other fashion labels that our target audience were highly influenced by were 'Topshop', American Apparel' etc so we tried to use items of clothing from these labels in our video on our actors. In the shot above Sam is wearing a 'Topman' jumper and can also be seen wearing a top from this same label later on. We did this because it is a fashion style that is the audience's own so they would be able to recognise this. In the screenshot again below I am wearing an 'American Aparell' jumper to influence the audience further.