A2 Pop Video: Making the digipak

Making the album cover

Step 1 - choosing the photo
I first had to decide what photo I was going to use for the album cover. This was an important decision as I had to choose a photo that would best promote our artist, fit with our song genre and also look appealing to a potentional buyer. After experimenting with a few of our best photos I chose this image to be the cover.

I chose this photo because it was clear and focused with good lighting and contrast, the artist is central and dominent in the photo and so will stand out as the main feature, she is looking directly into the camera and has a casual pose which reflects her genre of music.

Step 2 - editing

After choosing the best and most suitable photo, I wanted to edit it to make it look more professional and appealing as an album cover. I did this using Adobe photoshop. I felt that the colours in the photo were to bright and had to high of a contrast, I therefore lowered the saturation and contrast to take out the overpowering colours. However I then felt like the photo was too dull and faded which wasn't the look I was trying to achieve, so I began to play around with the photo filter tool, adding different shades of browns and oranges to the colours, this produced a tinted, old look to the photo which I really liked and felt fitted to our style.

Below is an image which shows the transition of the photo during each stage of editing.

Step 3 - text
I really liked the style of Ellie Gouldings text and so wanted to try and achieve the same effect in my own work. I went onto the website 'dafont.com' to look at different fonts that would be suitable and found the font 'noir-et-blanc', I downloaded the font so that I could try it with the rest of the cover to see what it would look like.

I used an outer glow effect on the text in order to ahcieve the look of Ellie gouldings 'Lights' album. I really like this effect because it makes the writing look as if it is lit up and glowing, making it stand out against the background which has duller, less bright colours.

Ellie Gouldings cover

Darcy Jones cover

Making the album back cover

Step 1 - choosing the photo
I chose this photo as the back image because I needed a photo that had a lot of space to put text - song playlist, copyright information, however I also wanted the artist to still be featured. I felt that this image was perfect to use as it met both my needs - there is plenty of space to the left of the artist in which text can be placed. When looking through all my photos from the shoot I found that there where a number of images that where similar to this one however an aspect of this particular photo that I really liked was that the artist is looking to the left which is where the text will be and I liked the idea that she is looking at the text, i.e the playlist of songs.

Step 2 - editing
I had used the photo filter tool to alter the colours in the album cover and so I needed to use the same affect on the back cover so that the two complimented each other. The image below shows again the stages I took throughout the editing process.

Step 3 - text

In my research I found that it was popular for the same text font to be used throughout the album. I therefore used the font 'noir-et-blanc' (the same as the album title) for the playlist of songs on the back cover, I used the same effect - outer glow, to make the text stand out from the background. I wanted the layout to look ordered and sophistacated so I centralised each song and ordered them by word length.

Sony Music

After researching different album covers I needed to decided on a record label to distribute our aritist. After researching a number of different companys i found sony music:

‘Sony Music Entertainment is a global recorded music company with a roster that includes a broad array of both local artists and international superstars. The company boasts a vast catalog that comprises some of the most important recordings in history. It is home to premier record labels representing music from every genre. Sony Music Entertainment is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.’

Sony music have signed hundreds of artists with a wide range of genres and status:

- Kelly Clarkson

- One direction

- The fray

- Daughtry

- Foster the people

Step 4 - songs

When it came to deciding what songs to list on the back cover I decided to use song titles from both Birdy and Ellie Goulding as they were the two main artists that inspire our work.

I used the same font and effect on this text as I did on the front cover so as it becomes recognisable as 'Darcy Jones' work.

Making the lyric book

Step 1 - choosing the photos

I chose these photos to be the main images in the lyric book because I felt they showed the artist in different stages of writing and recording process and also showed her in a natural, unstaged way, doing what she loves.

Step 2 - editing

I wanted the photos in the lyric book to be different to the previous photos featured on the front and back cover. I had already used a different setting for the photoshoot to take place in so that the overall digi-pac was more varied.

I therefore edited the saturation of the images on adobe photoshop to black and white.

Having these images in black and white also represents them being unstaged and natural, an aspect of Darcy Jones character that we wanted to show throughout our products.

Step 2 - text

I needed to have text underneath the song title informing the audience on who wrote and produced each song, this is important as it is a way of promoting the music producers and writers and also covers issues of copyright.

The text reads:

Written by Darcy Jones & Kate Sullivan

Produced by Martin Stone - Music by Stete Kipper

International copyright secured

The CD

The final part of the digipak is the CD.
When it came do designing this I had to consider our colour scheme as I wanted the CD print to be simple. I therefore used the colour drop tool on photoshop so as to get a matching colour. I used the same text for 'DARCY JONES' and 'SHELTER' as I did for the front cover so as to combine all aspects of the digipak together. To tie in the front and back cover with this section I also added the long grass behind the CD.

When looking at existing CD prints I noticed that again the record company logo was displayed in small pint along the bottom as well as referance to copyright. I therefore added in similar text to fit in with our artist.

The text reads:

Sony Music