Digipak photos

Last week sometime I met up with Renee (our artist in case you forgot) to take pictures for my advert and CD cover. We met at Westfield in Stratford so I could use the massive staircase outside to take my shots as this was my a part of my idea. Here are the ones that made it to the shortlist:

Okayy, so there are loads more, but I don't want to completely give it away yet. The next set of pictures I needed were pictures of clouds for my background. It was slightly hard do get a decent picture of clouds because the weather wasn't exactly great. So my pictures first came out something like this:

That doesn't even look real does it? But I assure you I did take it. And I took some more a few days ago when there were actual clouds buuuuut im not gonna show you those either. :D Until I'm much more closer to the final products. :)

Do's and Don'ts of design work

The Do’s and Don’ts of Design Work

In lesson Rebecca went over the vital thing we need to take into account when doing our digipack’s and the things we had to make sure we didn’t do. These are the things she advised:

Do’s:

·      Use clear font – make it noticeable and easy to read

·      Use appropriate sizes for images and font- make the artist bigger than the font, so that the artist dominates and no the other way round.

·      Use clear photos that are in focus

·      Be careful where you place the font – it must follow conventions of your genre and must be clear from a distance.

·      Only use three different colours and font’s maximum throughout the whole ancillary product

·      There must be a visual link throughout the whole digipack and advertisement.

·      Use appropriate industry logos and conventions, properly positioned – barcode, date, copyright, titles, artist name.

From looking at previous students ancillary products the teachers were able to establish the common faults. To help prevent use from making the same ones they have made us very aware of them and advised use what not to do:

 Don’ts:

·      Don’t stretch any images – this will make them distorted and also become out of focus – thus losing a lot of the quality of your digipack.

·      Don’t use any unnecessary effects – any use of effects has to be clearly explained and justified and you need to be able to prove that your use on any effect is still following conventions of your genre.

·      Don’t use layer styles

·      Don’t place text across the artist’s face – this will just over power the artist because you won’t be able to see them clearly and the artist meant to be the focus of the digipack.

·      Don’t use a font simply because you like it. – the font that you choose must be linked to your genre and represent the image you are trying to portray of your artist.

·      Don’t feel you need a separate photo on every panel – be creative.

Making the Back Panel

After i went to take some pictures with Renee I could finally start making my digipack. I started with the back panel because that's the only images i was sure of. In my digipack mock up my idea for my back panel was this:

But when i took the picture it came out like this:

This didn't work out so well because number one, the background wasn't completely black, so it was hard for me to cut out in photoshop, but also when i put it into photoshop this is what happened:

This is the image after i placed it into photoshop. As you

can see the image took up too much space on the back

panel and i didn't have any space to put in any text. 

So i tried to adjust the image using the shift key, but she came up too small.

So thought let me make it longer to see if you wouldn't

notice the distort too much - but that just didn't work.

However, because I was taking pictures for my back up ideas, I was able to use one of those pictures alternatively for my back panel. Do you remember this idea I had for my Cd housing:

Well the pictures I took for this idea turned out really well, and the way the picture was taken made it easy to cut out, and left me with a lot of space to insert text – so I used it. J

I then wrote in all the conventional information for the back using the American Typewriter font and then used InDesign to arrange all my writing, because it makes it much easier.

To successful place my digipack from Photoshop into InDesign I first had to open up a new document in InDesign, and custom the measurements to match the ones from the Photoshop template for my digipack, In Photoshop it is 24.6 cm width and 12 cm height, which meant take I had to custom a for a 6mm (because in InDesign the measurement were in mm) gutter so that I could see the spine because in Photoshop the spine was included in the width, a 240mm width and a 120mm height. Then I put in two columns for the back and the front.

  

Now the measurements are the same as in Photoshop. After that I placed in my Photoshop image, then copied and pasted all the text and started arranging. 

This is my back panel (without my background):

Homemade Photoshop Tutorial

Before getting deep into my digipack, I wanted to recap on using Photoshop because I haven’t used Photoshop seen GCSE Media Studies because since I came to college it has all been motion work. So I composed a brief and basic tutorial on how to use it.  

PRODUCTION

In this lesson I was working on doing the Inside panels of the Digipak:


These are all the faces that I used in my digipak. I had to go through all the pictures and print screen the faces in all the same size because they all had to be equal because they were going to all be next each other.  

I then uploaded them all into photoshop, and put them all onto the Digipak so I could get started on sizing them and fitting them all in. This task was especially tedious and hard because I had to adjust each individual picture and fit it in as well as think about not ruining the picture for example not stretching it or making it too squashed. I spent a lot of time rearranging the photo's; putting different ones in different spots so that all the squares were the same.

This is how it looked when i had finished putting in all the faces. It took a long time but it was worth it, I then had to put in the silhouette of the CD because this side is going to be the CD housing.



As you can see I went to the shapes icon and I used the ellipse tool to make my silhouette. However when I put the circle on top of the faces, I saw that it covered all the middle part, so I went to the transparency tool and made it partially transparent so that you could still see where the CD was supposed to go as well as what was underneath.



This is the transparency tool, you have to select the object or layer that you want to make transparent and change the 'opacity' from 100% to something lower. As you can see from the picture I have added a 'shape 2' because I wanted a smaller shape in the middle to represent the hole inside the CD. I made the transparency for this shape a little higher than the first circle because you have to be able to see it against the larger circle. 





This is how it looked when i first put in the circles, I still have to fix it so that they are in the right proportion so that it matches the conventions of a typical pop Digipak.



I now had to work on the other inside panel of my Digipak. I have decided that this is the picture that i want to use for my inside panel. I think that this picture is really good for an inside panel because it clearly shows the artists and there is lots of space around her for text that I might add. I think that the location is very nice and it matches with the rest of the Digipak because it is to do with nature and natural beauty.  

I have decided to put this quote at the bottom of the inside panel. I think that this

quote is appropriate for the the digipak because it ties in with the music video that we made. The quote says that you should always be your self, and this links in with the lyrics of the song for example some of the lyrics: " suddenly I see this is what I want to be, suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me" these lyrics connotate that she finally see who she really is and she loves it, the whole song is about realisation of natural beauty and the emphasis on the diversity of the world. I have also added leaves on each side of the quote because it then links it with the front and back of the Digipak.

PRODUCTION

In this lesson I was finishing off the front of my Digipak on photoshop.. I had to add all the little icons and the copyright information etc.

Firstly I went to the web and located a Digipak from the original artist, this was to get a feel of where I should put things and what I should write for the back of my Digipak. I started by zooming into the copyright information, I wanted to see what she wrote for her Digipak .  

This is the close up of her copyright information:

I then I minimised both photoshop and Internet page so that they were the same size and I could see both at the same time so that I could easily look at her copyright information so that I could have some guidance.  

I kept righting without stopping and as you can see it looks messy and looks like a lot of writing, this is because I haven't made the font small yet, and I haven't put the lines underneath each other so that it looks neat on the back of my Digipak.



This is how it looked condensed down and made smaller. I also made the colour of the front white because it stood out more and was more readable than black.



This is a picture of how my website looked against the background. I have decided to make this white as well, this is so that it will match the copyright information and also it stands out against the background.




I have added this barcode on my Digipak,

The barcode is a necessary convention of a

Digipak and you have to put it on the back of

your Digipak. I have decided to put mine
on the bottom right hand corner.




This is the logo of my record label, This is an important icon to put on your Digipak, you have to put this on so that the consumer knows which record label the artist is signed to. It is also really important because it promotes the label by being on the back of all their artists Digipaks.  



PRODUCTION

On Wednesday i went into the library and used one of the mac's to carry on with my digipak front panel and back panel. As you know i was stuck with what i should do for my back ground because the plain purple background with the leaves just wasn't what i wanted and i didn't think that it was good enough. When i was at home the night before i was looking at all the pictures and i saw one that i took and it was supposed to be for the blog just to document what i was doing when i went out to take pictures for the digipak. i looked at this picture and instantly new that it would be perfect for me to use as my background for my back panel.

I then went on the filter button and made some adjustments because i needed it to look that same style as that front panel, so i equalized it. this gave the picture the same effects as the front panel picture. i was very happy with the result. i REALLY preferred this over the plain purple background with the leaves. 

 when i was editing it i didn't know what my titles were because i left the sheet with the names on it at home, so i just made up random titles because i wanted to see how it would look. 

I then put individual leaves around the track list because
i felt like it looked lonely by itself. 

I Hand to make so many layers because you couldn't move one leaf without moving everything, so i decided that if i put each leaf on a different layer then i can move each of them in different places separately without moving all of them. this took some time and i also had to find the right leaf for the place that i wanted it to be, but in the end it came out really nice.  

This is where the leaves at the bottom are placed. 

I had a really difficult time with the Title because the colours that i had chosen for my colour scheme merged into the leaves and you couldn't really see it well, so i had to look for a colour that wasn't random but had to stand out. I found the cream colour that you see below, which is the closet to the theme and stood out. i don't really like it that much, I prefer if I could have something else but this is alright for the title because the title is supposed to stand out and be bold so that it catches the readers eyes. 


I then had to think about where to place the album name, i also had to consider whether to put it in CAPITALS or lowercase; i ended up going with lowercase because it didn't detract away from the artist name but also stood out, and i chose a good size to put it. I moved it several times, in several different places underneath the artist name and it was between the first picture and the second picture below. I decided to go with the the bottom one; it looked more together, more wholesome and in its place. 

I remembered after that the track listing that we want to use is from one of KT Tunstall's albums. so i went online and found the album; here is the track listing. however even though she has great names for tracks, some of them looked wired on my track list therefore I didn't use all of them. and I added 1 of my own tracks. 

This is a close up of my track list
 so you can see what it says.

This is how the back looked after i had corrected
the track listing and put all the leaves in place  

This is the spine: I have decided to leave it a plain colour. I tried to cover it with the front picture and i tried to cover it with the back picture but they both looked weird on the spine so i decided to leave it plain. this turned out to be a good idea because the artist name and album name looks very prominent and eyes catching on a plain background. i have decided to do the writing in deep red because it matches the shades of different colours on the leaves on the front panel .

Digipak Background

In my background I have clouds so on photoshop i have been experimenting with cartoon clouds and real clouds. 

This is my digipak so far. It looks very cartoon like, but I'm not completely sure I want my background of clouds to look so...fake. I like them, but I don't think that when I put in my picture of Renee sitting on the steps I think they'll look really mismatched.

Above i have taken a picture of real clouds and intensified the white in the clouds to make them look brighter. I think this works much better than the fake clouds and I will probably most definitely use real clouds rather than clouds. :)