Planning Digipak-Miss Miller

Planning Digipak

12/11/2014

Vasil

A digipak provides the fans with more information from the artist (such as a personal fan message). This strengthens the bond between the fan and the artist. Digipaks are also quite unique and more attractive as they featured bonus tracks and also other rarity moment, which increases the demand for the artist and the profit for the record label. The use of strengthened cardboard allows more space for the artist to insert high quality graphics/pictures which further intrigues the dedicated artist fan.

There is a second type of a CD, which is known as a jewel CD case. This type of case is argued to be more traditional and durable due to the use of a plastic case. Nevertheless, the use of such CD is not so much for the Artist`s fanbase, but more for the audience that wants to try out the artist. AS the Jewell CD case contains less images and less songs it is quicker and easier to make, which results in a lower price. The case will not let the booklet to bend while the digipak can have its contents lost. Furthermore, Jewell CD cases are easier to store, which for the music fan on the road is perfeect as vehicles have limited storage facilities. Thus both types of CD packs, have their positives and negatives.

In this post, I will be explaining how I will plan my digipak. I will be planning a digipak as we all ready have an audience in the music market that we can target this digipak at. To begin with, the artist can be seen at the back of my digipak. This is because I wished to create and enigma for the audience with which I could intrigue them in the first place to check the digipak out. As some of the songs inside contain two types of genre, I have decided to use a simple set for the front cover as this links to the conventions of the indie genre and as there is a leaf on it, the audience would want to see what is portrayed in the rear cover. Once they flip the side, they will witness our artist looking at a poker room through a window. This is a slight hint to the content of the "Blue Jeans" music video. Autumn Healy (our artist`s name) will be portrayed as being independent through her clothing and posture. With part of the set being seen, the audience would then notice that there is a small list of the artist`s songs that is portrayed via the poker hand that is left on the table. On each of the cards there will be two songs and on the last card, there will be the bar-code with the price. The vintage style will still be seen through the artist`s writing from the personal message and also through the titles of the songs that have been embedded in objects from a 50`s club. Thus the use of the front cover will be unconventional for the indie genre as our artist will be portrayed at the back, while the use of autumn scenery and a leaf with her name and album name, should intrigue the audience in the first pick up the digipak. Furthermore, this way, the audience can build a memorable image of the album and be able to separate it from previous artist albums or other artists that have decided to use the conventional style of a close-up with the artist being in the middle and  some scenery at the back.

The colours within this digipak are going to be a mix between the indie and house genre. This will be used to show the bravery and pride of the artist in her experiments with new types of genre. On the front cover, there will be simple setting, displaying a hill in the middle of autumn with the night and moon being displayed. The ground will be with autumn colours, but they would have passed through a filter that reminisces a film from the 50`s. This way conventions such as cheap scenery from the indie genre and the use of both bright and dark colours from the house genre should intrigue audiences from both genre`s. The colour that will be seen on all of the slides from the digipak will be red. It will be used on the artist`s lips under the form of lipstick; on the playing cards as well as the moon on the front cover. This should give off the connotation of love, life as well as dangerous subjects such as gambling, home abuse (Home abuse will be seen in the slide where there is broken glass from the bottle). The use of a heart shaped leaf and the black spade on the CD should give a hint to the audience what the theme of the new song is (gambling and love) which would intrigue the audience as the artist presents a piece of their own life experience in the form of a code. The digipak would also feature pure colours such as white, which converts to the indie genre and causes the audience to be less distracted from the message that the artist is trying to give them. It will mainly be used, in the Personal message side, as well as the ones that contain objects with built in lyrics.

Usually, the layout that we agreed to use was for it to be simple. However, when we meet again on our next meeting, I would show them this layout and design, which is slightly more complicated as it contains more enigmatic design as well as the main themes of the the songs in the album will be displayed via the graohics and colours that I intend to use for the digipak. The artist's name will be in white and bold making the artist`s name more noticeable and standing out. This highlights her importance and promotes the album as being more memorable. Furthermore the use of the colour white, would portray that she is new at experimenting with the house genre. Most of the text will be writen in type writer style (a part from the front cover and the personal message as they would portray that she has thought more for her devoted fans and wishes to make them more personal for each fan) which adds to the vintage look. Furthermore, it makes the text/layout look more feminine, which shows the artist's "down to earth" side and makes the digipak more personal for the fans.

 
There are many different connotations that can be taken from this digipak. For example, the CD features black spades and a £5 note on one side and an autumn leaf on the other side. These objects will be placed on a white background in order to make them stand out further. This is conventional to the indie genre, yet subversive as once again the themes of love within life and social dangers within humans are portrayed within this album. 

In Conclusion, this planning has aided me in deciding what to taking pictures of for the digipak as well as what photos should be made on set. This plan should also help me when using Adobe Photoshop CS6 to create the digipak as well as the adverts surrounding it. In turn when it comes to creating our group digipak,  I would have built up a substantial amount of knowledge surround the creation of digipaks and also how to make it intriguing for the audience which will further assist in creating a group digipak that is appealing to our target audience.