First Draft of Digipak

This is the first draft of my digipak. Despite the fact that it features locations that feature in my video the digipak as a whole as lots of room for improvements. For a start, there are clear discrepancies between the first draft of my video and the first draft of my digipak - this is not a binary opposition in anyway, this is just a poor first attempt at a digipak whilst becoming accustomed to software (Adobe Photoshop CS3) and also a lack of album cover research has led me to make a fairly lax, uninformed first draft of my digipak. The front of my digipak features a very bare, and meaningless picture accompanied by a typography that is incredibly basic and no logo. I felt at the time that putting pictures of locations with the omission of the protagonist would create ambiguity, however it just makes the digipak seem irrelevant in comparison to the video - this is a point that my teacher alluded to: just as there must be continuity in the video itself, there must be an element of continuity in the video and the ancillary texts produced with it - like many products, they must match in some way in order to be identified as the same brand. This is the most important improvement I need to make to my digipak, I need more relevant photos (featuring the protagonist) and these need to be adapted on Photoshop CS3 so that there is a monochrome effect applied to the photos to match my video and overall desire to achieve that raw undisguised 'indie' effect in my work. I also intend to put other effects on the cover of my digipak however I am undecided as to what at this point.

It is also notable that the back cover looks out of place and should not be featured on the album cover, since this shot never actually features at any point in my video it was merely me trying to be adventurous with the cover, however, as I have found out in my research, minimalism is the key to creating effective artwork on a digipak for bands of my style (indie rock/hard rock). Therein, I will be making a plethora of changes to my digipak.

Another thing that I need to include which I have not done are track listings on the back cover of the digipak - this is a key component to the digipak as when potential consumers pick up an album and ponder over buying it, they will instinctively flip the album over and analyse the back of the album to see other songs that will feature on the album and also examine the artwork featured on the back cover. In essence, I would say that the digipak has no definitive meaning and it does not give the band an identity by which they can be recognised. This has lead to a change in my planning, I realise now that I should develop an appropriate logo to help construct a brand identity and open up further marketing oppurtunitites for the artist.

The changes should be as follows:

- Take new photos featuring the protagonist
- Use a monochrome effect on the photos and adapt contrast to suit
- Feature track listings on the back of the digipak including all other songs that the artist intends for the album
- Use more fitting typography to suit the artist
- Develop an appropriate logo to accompany this typography and gain the band recognition also using semiotics.