Final Ancillary Tasks

Developing a Rough Digipak : Inside Right Panel

Finally, the development needed for the inside right panel of the digipak:

STEP 1

All that was needed for this panel was the same background as the left hand side which was easily transferred from the previous file. No other features were needed because this panel would be covered by a plastic CD holder, meaning anthing on the underside would only be covered by the CD anyway (at least for most of the time). The magic wand tool was used here after a template was transferred onto the canvas but had a white background. Using the magic wand tool allowed Tom to remove the white background easily and, after tweaking the opacity, leave just a clear CD-holder template outline. Finally, an inner bevel was used to give the plastic holder a more realistic look as it gives the impression that it is embossed from the page.

Developing a Rough Digipak : Inside Left Panel

Steps taken when creating the inside left panel:

STEP 1

The same size canvas as the front cover was used (12x12cm). An extremely basic design was incorporated into this panel. The same background was used from both the back and front cover just rotated and zoomed so less of it was seen. Tom then placed a black box but with about 70% opacity so you can see the background. The Young Money Entertainment logo was brought in and given an outer glow to give it a smoother outline. The artist image from the front cover was reduced in size and brought into this canvas and then into the middle of the YME logo.


STEP 2

The same font, 'Roadway', was used yet again for all of the text throughout this panel. Firstly a basic bold and white format was used for the 'Young Money Entertainment' line, which worked quite well on top of the black box. The tracklist was then copied from the back to this panel so that the same text settings could be used for this information (i.e. thanks to fansl, the producers of the album artwork and the copyright information).

Developing a Rough Digipak : Back Cover

This was the process for the back cover created by Tom:

STEP 1

A slightly larger Photoshop canvas was created for this panel (0.8cm wider) as the spine of the digipak needed to be taken into consideration. The background image used for the front cover was duplicated so that a house style was shown throughout each panel of the digipak. Another black strip was created for the spine (along with a small coloured strip for the black 'Fireworks' text) and the bottom left panel.


STEP 2

Necessties were added within the bottom left panel (i.e. barcode, recycle logo, disc logo and Young Money Entertainment logo). These features kept the conventions of every digipak found today. Using the 'Roadway' text Tom put the album title and name of the artist on the spine. This is essential if a CD is to be recognised in a shop on a rack. The Young Money Entertainment logo was added again for authenticity.


STEP 3

The tracklist was added using, again, the 'Roadway' text to continue the same style. The text was uniquely spaced and moved to the left-hand side of the canvas for a more abstract look. Using the colour picker, Tom took a colour from the background, made it lighter and used this colour for the tracklist text. This allows the text to be seen more clearly and can be easily read by the customer. Black text was used for any featuring artists on the songs. A light gold outer glow was dded to the text in combination to a darker drop shadow to give a slight embossing effect to the text.

Developing a Rough Digipak : Front Cover

As a group, a decision was made that the two rough attempts at a Digipak front cover were not good enough quality to compete with the Digipaks on sale today. Therefore we decided it would be best to try and combine the two ideas into a third attempt to create a better quality front cover. This turned out to be the third and final rough piece and below was how it was developed.

STEP 1

Using the Photoshop software, Tom used a 12x12cm canvas as the base of the front cover. This size is exactly the same as real Digipak dimensions. Dragging the image of our artist onto the canvas, Tom proceeded to manipulating the image to look like it had been sketched. To do this he first desaturated the image, then used the filter tool and modified certain sketch settings to get the perfect look. Finally he played around with the blending options to create the final image.



STEP 2

For the background, Tom used a golden, canvas-like texture found on the internet and dragged it onto his Photoshop canvas. Using the square-shape tool, Tom created a black strip to go along the bottom of the front cover, which would hold the title of the track and the parental advisory sticker. He used the font 'Roadway' for the 'Fireworks' text and then merged the black strip and text layers together. Finally, using the magic wand tool, Tom deleted the text from within the black strip to create the effect that the text is behind the strip.


STEP 3

Using the same text used for 'Fireworks', Tom created the simplistic bold text in the top right of the front cover. The is a very generic text type used throughout the rap genre, there are rarely fancy fonts and bold, plain fonts seem to be the most popular. To emphasise the text more, an outer glow was applied to to the text via layer options.


STEP 4

FIinally, a firework-like graphic was created by Tom to improve the background and create a connection between the song and the digipak. The tools used were the magic wand, background eraser, hue saturation, opacity settings and glow tools. To finish, the canvas texture was duplicated but then the opacity was reduced so that all layers would have a canvas like texture (except the artist image).

Rough Digipak Designs

After researching many varieties of digipaks on the market, Tom went about producing our digipak with the ideas we had come up with. The group had decided that, obviously, the digipak needed to have a connection to the song which therefore created our house style. This meant the use of blacks, reds, yellows and oranges to relate to fire and a continued use of the firework imagery.

Tom started out with two designs

1. The first consisting of our artist covered in flames on a black and grey background.
   
2. The second was a simple but effective front cover with a couple of white fireworks with orange and white bold text on a black background.

Developing our rough digipak disc

1. First of all, Tom found a CD template online. It needed to be black in order for it to work with our design idea. He then put this into Photoshop so he and John could edit it.

2. Secondly, John created a design using the paintbrush tool on photo to put onto the plain black template in order to give it a more raw effect - giving it a more urban feel.

3. Next, Tom found a text we all like, Roadway, and applied this to the CD with the name of the artists (Drake and Alicia Keys) and the name of the song in larger letters (Fireworks). This brings more attention to the song name and not the artists.

4. Tom then edited the inside circle of the CD to have the colours inverted to have a white background and black text. This is because usual CDs sometimes have a clear section here but we decided a coloured design would look better to diffferentiate the two sections.

5. After getting some feedback from the rest of the class, we decided as a group that it would be better to just continue the same design as the outside section into the middle section. John changed this and then edited the white text to have an orange inner glow and red outer glow. This created the effect of the writing giving off heat and light, relating to the song title.

6. To finish of the CD copyright information was added around the inside of the edge in small white text (simply Arial as this text is important copyright information) which can be seen on almost every CD.

Logos on our Digipak

The Parental Advisory sticker is an essential feature for any digipak containing explicit lyrics (basically swear words or inappropriate language).

A barcode is used as an optical machine-readable representation of data which is used by shops to acknowledge a product that has been sold.

The Young Money Entertainment Logo is used to show the record label the song comes from. This is needed to acknowledge the label and give them credit for the music within the digipak.

A Recycling Logo is now featured on practically every digipak across the world. This is because recycling has become a big deal due to global warming. The recycling logo normally consists of three green arrows, but black would be more suitable for our digipak design.

Photos Taken to use in the Ancillary Tasks

Magazine Advertisement Creation - Research

Before creating the magazine advertisement for our digipak, we needed to research others in the market to see how they grabbed the reader's attention and what they included on the poster. Below are some examples.

Digipak Creation - Research

Before creating our digipak for the single 'Fireworks' by Drake we decided to research other digipaks to discover the conventions of the front cover, back cover, inside covers and the CD itself.

The General Shape of a Digipak

This Oasis digipak shows the main parts that we need to create - front cover, back cover, the CD itself and the inside covers.


Examples of Front Covers


The above covers are general R&B and Rap single covers. This is the sort of thing we are aiming to create. All have a picture of the artist on them (even if it is abstract).


There are many different forms of front covers, but the three of the four above the most widely used. There is a picture of the artist taking up most of the shot or in the centre of the screen.


There is then large text to draw the attention of the consumer to what song they are buying and who it is by.





In contrast Kanye West's Power challenges these conventions because there is not a normal picture of the artist but it draws the attention of the consumer because of how abstract it is (a sword through someone's head will draw the eyes!)





Depending on the content there could be a Parental Advisory sticker on the front warning consumers of explicit content (such as swear words or mentions of drugs or sex).





Examples of Back Covers

The above picture shows examples of the back covers of digipaks. They have a small number of tracks on the back (the average being 3 - consisting of the original track, a clean track and an instrumental)

There is also the barcode on the back and the record company logo/writer and producers. This is normally also made to fit with the colour scheme of the digipak - such as the bottom right of the below picture. The logos are both blue, fitting in with the text in the track list. The same goes for the left side of the picture, the writer and producer information is black on a pink background, allowing the style to remain throughout.

Examples of CDs

The CDs above are the sort of thing you would find in a digipak today. They come with different looks but mostly have the same thing on them.


They have a track listing:





the name of the artist:





the name of the single:







and copyright information:







As you can see from the four examples, CD designs come in two types - plain shiny CDs and CDs with coloured designs on them. The coloured design is the one our group is going to create.


Examples of Inside Covers





As shown above, the inside covers of a digipak can be spread over two pages (ours will only have the left hand side page as the right will be covered by the CD). The page will have another track listing on it only this time it has details about writers and producers of the songs. At the bottom there are the logos from the various music labels the artist is associated with (ours would be Young Money Entertainment, Cash Money Records and Universal Music Group).