Digipack Research

MIKA CD

Mika is an very positive artist, therefore his design for album is funky and cartoony style as even the title of his CD is ‘Life in Cartoon’. The main focus on the front cover is the artist’s name created in a 3D technique, the actual photograph of a singer is blended into the cartoony drawings; it is really small, but placed next to his name so people will straight away recognize him from the imaginary world. The theme beyond all of the cartoons are the clouds and the sky. The style of music the artist is producing is easy to identify as there is a character laying on a sofa, audience will connect it with a relax and calm. Also the piano at the top, left corner is suggesting that the music will contain a lot of piano playing. The font used at the back is similar to the hand written effect, which makes CD more personal, according to the artist. Technique used throughout the design of the CD could be compared to the famous collage technique without using the ripping paper effect; replaced by computerized editing. Overall the CD have a positive effect on the audience as it is colourful, it reminds people of happiness and joy. I think artist achieved the wanted outcome and I personally like it as well.

FAERIE ARCHIVES DIGIPACK

The digipack of Faerie Archives is different from normal designs. Its design is printed on the old paper. To keep it really thematic there is the motif of old map of a house and letters and well as old pictures placed inside to keep audience more engaged and connected with the CD; it is like a sharing the secrets. Even the name of the band is bringing to mind that Archives is something old from the past.

The CD itself have a title kept with the same design as a inside of digipack, however the graphics and background colours are not the same. The blue and green theme is creating sense of sky. The character is representing the faerie with white wings and white clothing suggesting her purity. The faerie’s gesture might suggest the type of music included on the CD, gracious and delicate. On the other hand the old theme and maps might suggest the mystery and  secrets therefore the music can reflect those subjects. Overall  the digipack is really personal it reveals some secretes you are able to assume it by the notes placed inside and the map showing house and secret places.

RIOT DIGIPACK

Riot is a band playing light rock music. The colour scheme of their digipack is black, white and orange, those three contrasting colours and matching together well and representing the style of the band. The orange colour is used to highlight important information included into the digipack. The front cover is showing the picture of the four members of the band. It is also repeating the roughly hand written logo to make people remember and connect with the artist straight away after seeing the cover. Also the white frame is containing the information about this album, however the name of it is not written with capital letter; this might be insignificant because Riot band is not caring about the formality of the writing; they know that they fans will listen to them no matter what. The background throughout the digipack is written with felt tip pen. The repetition of the bands name come across in every section and by looking at it you are getting the felling of graffiti type of style, although it is not.

The inside page 1 is illustrating two members of the band on the black background. Their pictures are edited so that they are black and white to match to overall theme of the album. On page 1 there are private messages incorporated with photos, those messages are hand written, scratched on top of black background.  Page 2 is all about the credits and thanks to persons who helped with realisation of the Riot band album and digipack. Though they are mixed together creating the mix mash of words. On the back cover there is a close up picture on a members of band smiling, looking straight onto you. This is giving away the sense of being grateful and friendly toward everyone who listen to their music.  At the back cover there is also the list of songs included in album, however they are not numbered, but again mixed with various words you can only spot them because of different colour (orange; used to highlight).

Practice CD Cover Design

This CD cover idea came from my drawing of interpretation of Nerina Pallot song called Shopia. My orginal drawing had some different features, but I decided to change them as they didn't look nice while I was designing. So what has changed? Firstly in my drawing insted of artist head I drew the heart, however it wasn't looking proffesional enough. 

Therefore I decided to add a little bit surrealism to my design and insted of heart I placed artist head creating the character of a flower with human head. Also At my drawing I had houses and cars at the background, but I though it will be too much if I would add them to my design. What I like the most in my design is the paper cut effect of the 'flower body'. It makes the CD cover more interesting. If I would have chance to improve I would consider to change the font of the artist name as I think I could match better with the graphics.

Evaluation of My Final Magazine Cover

After turning my week points into as I believe my strong sections, I asked people one more time about their estimation of my magazine cover. The opinions were a lot better than last time, the bad comments also appeared but very rarely, however they concerned little things like a position of a barcode.

What people liked about my beauty cover now? They liked the match of main image and layout as well as the fonts used; they described it to be reflective in a sense of a genre of the magazine, eye catching due to various vibrant colours, friendly and interesting looking, nice, professionally made magazine cover. So I was really happy to hear those positive views of people. This time my magazine improved a lot. It is aiming at its target audience, looking fabulous and effective. I think the changing of the background from white to the whole image was a big step forward to what I achieved at the end. Now I suppose my magazine is looking better and if I would have a chance to improve it I would change the logo of the brand and I would also add a sky line at the top to make it look even more funky and professional. Overall I am satisfied with my work, I putted a lot of effort into it and I believe the effects are visible...

My Final Cover Design

Evaluation of My Pratice Magazine Cover

Review of my first magazine cover design wasn’t impressive; however people made some good and bad comments about it. Therefore to get the most of their opinions I tried to consider every point their made regarding my design.  Half of the peoples liked my white background and the main image of the model I chosen; they thought I was looking professional. The other half preferred to have whole image on the cover as they consider it appearing to be livelier. Vast majority liked my logo design and name, they review it to be successful in sending the message, not like the whole overlook of the magazine cover ,which they believed wasn’t  showing enough of my selected topic; beauty. What often people didn’t like was the layout and colour scheme. As I used three colour schemes; white, candy pink and light blue, the colours didn’t stand out very well, they did made the cover aiming for girls however it wasn’t bold and attractive enough. Whereas the layout of text was a bit confusing for eyes and the font styles didn’t match each other. In general my scores were good; however few pieces and areas needed necessary to improve.