Hiya! Welcome back to another research and planning post! Today we started to create our digipak.
This is the template that we are using for this:
We are using a template for this so that we have the correct measurements. We have decided to create a four-panelled digipak in order to keep it fairly simple and not too complicated which is common to other digipaks within the pop genre. For example:
All of the digipaks that you can see above are marketing female pop singers, providing inspiration for me and my group's own digipak. From these different examples you can see that digipaks within this genre are rather simplistic. Their front panels all show photographs of the artist, and then inside the other panels of the digipaks more, very similar photographs of them can be seen. Some of them have extra decoration, for example Jessie J's CD is simply a plain white but has a love-heart on it, giving it a little bit extra decoration. And inside Rihanna's digipak you can see a photograph of her spanning three panels, lying amongst roses. Whilst this is again rather straightforward and uncomplicated, these roses add some extra decoration, making it easy for the audience to understand but also giving them a little bit extra of something else to keep them interested in the artist. Thus, we have chosen to create a four-panelled digipak in order to follow some of the conventions seen within our genre of pop music.
Before we started to create our actual digipak, we decided to sketch our plans for it out in hand. Below you can see images of these sketches:
From these pictures you can see how we have planned out our digipak. However, it is important to note that these are only drafts and as we create our digipak, we may make changes to these original plans. However, from these sketches so far you can see that we are planning to use a photograph of Kati's portrait for the front panel of our digipak, and then for our back panel we are going to use another photograph of Kati but this photo will probably be a wider shot. Then for the disc panel we are planning to use another photo of Kati and then for the fourth panel, at the moment we are thinking of using a photograph of flowers. Whilst this connects with the femininity of our largely female audience, we are also thinking of adding some neon lights/colours to this picture in order to make it more exciting and to also connect with the partying hobby of our predominantly teenage audience.
So once we had found a template for our digipak, we imported it into Photoshop. We then created a new document where we selected the exact measurements of the template and then scaled the canvas to fit the size of 14.1cm by 12.5cm. This ensured that our digipak was following the correct measurements. Once we had done this, we then had to decide which photo we would use for our front panel. Eventually we decided to use the photograph below because it has an element of mystery to it due to the way in how Kati slightly covers her face with the jacket, generating excitement within our audience. As well as his it makes good use of lighting, with red and blue soft box lights used when taking this image, giving it a high contrast and making it a very successful photograph:
However, before we added it to our actual digipak it required some editing via Photoshop. In our group, Destinie was responsible for this editing and the first step she took was to unsharpen the photo:
What this does is that is makes the photo more in focus, sharpening the image, and also sharpens the edges of the image to make them clearer.
After this she then increased the contrast and brightness of the photo:
The next step was to then add a gradient fill to the image:
A gradient fill was used in order to make the background of the image darker whilst making Kati's face lighter at the same time, making her the central focus of the image thus drawing our audience's attention to our artist. In order to make this successful, the style was changed to 'radial' which has the effect of making the centre focus of the image the brightest part of the image. As well as this, a 45 degree angle was used to change the lighting of the image, and then the 'reverse' effect was used to make the lighting more centred on Kati, in order to give her the appearance of a 'superstar'.
After this, we then used Photoshop also to create the front panel of our digipak. Firstly, we used the 'blur' tool to blur out imperfections in Kati's skin, such as areas where it was too shiny. After we had edited the photo, we then added Kati's name, the name of her debut album and the Columbia Records logo (this is the record label we have chosen to represent our artist). You can see how this looks in the image below:
From this screenshot of the Photoshop process, you can also see how we included a spine in our digipak. This is also a large part of creating a digipak and in order to get it right we researched what is included in a spine of a digipak beforehand. From this research we found that these spines always contain the name of the artist and also the name of the album/EP. They also always include the name of the record label that produced the album/record(s). We found that some spines also include a source code in order for the album/EP to be easily identifiable. However, this is not essential to a digipak, so we decided to just include the name of our artist and the name of their album.
Today that is how far we have come with creating our digipak. We have now created the front panel but we still need to create the other panels. However, so far we have come to understand the tools of Photoshop more, specifically of how to select a certain canvas size in order to use the correct measurements of a digipak. This has meant that we have become even more familiar and more confident with using this software programme which will be very useful for when we come to create the other panels of our digipak.
Thanks for reading and come back again soon for an update on the digipak process!
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