Starting to think about Digipak designs and the Album Advertisement

On top of producing a music video, we also have to choose two out of three of the following to create: 

1. Digipak
2. Album Advert
3. Website for chosen artist

I have chosen the first two; Digipak and Album advert. I have chosen these two because I really enjoy using photoshop software to create media-related items, of which a Digipak and album advert are both one. I learnt how to use the photoshop software from a previous year 12 coursework when we had to design a magazine front cover, a contents page and double page spread. I picked up various different and useful skills from that coursework which I will be able to apply when reuniting with photoshop to design my Digipak and album advert. 

Digipak:

Even though we are working as a group to produce our final music video, the four of us do not have to chose the same two, nor do they have to be the same designs if we did all chose the same two. For example; I could create a Digipak featuring a picture of the 'artist' on the cover, whereas another group member could create a Digipak and not use any pictures of the 'artist' whatsoever. This is the part of the coursework where we are completely independent and do not need to consult within the group any ideas we have about our Digipaks. Therefore we could initially have an outcome of four different Digipak designs for our artist; Passion Pit. 

The reason I have chosen to create a Digipak for my artist is because I really enjoy buying and collecting CDs and I think this would be a great opportunity to be able to design my own Digipak. There is no limit to the ideas I could generate for my Digipak; I could photograph a couple of friends who could be improvising to be the album artist, I could use photos of landscape that I have taken or I could simply create some sort of pattern on photoshop to use as the album cover; there is no limit. The album will be a release under the chosen artist 'Passion Pit' and will need to include the chosen song for our music video, which is 'Constant Conversations'. The rest of the songs can be made up titles, other song titles or other Passion Pit song titles.

When looking at various examples of Digipaks within the 'indietronica' genre, I have noticed that the artists do not tend to include any people on the cover of their albums, nor do they rarely include any within the Digipaks on a whole. Therefore I have noticed that most artists will use images on their album cover of landscape or just designs and patterns which have been created on photoshop or similar software. This has indicated to me that it would be perhaps a poor choice to design a Digipak which features the album artist on the cover as it seems that very little 'inidietronica' artists tend to follow this trend. Therefore I need to take some time to sit and brainstorm a few ideas which spring to mind that I could use for the design of my Digipak, other than people, which I have already opted against. 

Whilst analysing some Digipaks earlier on within the research part of my coursework, I was able to identify that some key conventions which will need to be included within my Digipak are; 

• Album title
• Barcode
• Track list
• Artist name and identification
• Logos
• Producers/ people involved
• Copyrighting

Then there are also various other conventions which do not necessarily need to be included but more often than not, they are included:

• Lyrics
• Thank You's
• Other photos from the photoshoot
• Official social media websites (twitter, facebook, main website etc)
• Exclusive bonus content (Deluxe Edition, fold-out poster etc)

Here are some examples of album covers from artists within the 'indietronica' genre:

 

Album Advert:

I have also decided that I want to chose the album advert option as opposed to the other option of creating a website for our chosen artist. I have made this decision because once again I enjoy using photoshop and would prefer to create another item on photoshop than having to actually create a website when I have very little understand or knowledge on how to do such thing. I think it would be a wise idea to replicate the album cover onto the album advert so that the album can be easily identifiable just from looking at the album advert. Therefore hopefully creating the album advert should not be too time consuming and I want it to follow a simple yet effective design which gives the key information and identification of the album artist in simple context. 

Similarly to the analysis of the Digipaks, I also analysed album adverts and from that analysis I once again identified many key conventions which are vital for the album advert:

• Album name
• Artist name
• Album release date
• Where to buy/pre-order
• Key singles which are included, that may have been released prior to the album