KNGSAdvancedPortfolioCharlotteGrainger: Digipak Planning..

For the second part of our coursework, we have to create two products to co side with our music video product; these are a album digipack, and a advertisement poster for the album.

We had to start with the album digi pack as we can't create an adverisement poster for a non exsistent album. We were given draft sheets with either four sides or six sides. We knew that we wanted to use a six side digi pack from the start as we had took many photos of the band when we filmed the performance stage and had enough to fill it all up. Also, from our analysis of digipacks, those from an indie rock genre are often quite detailed or have a lot of images of the band themselves so they are recognisable to the audience. We wanted to combine this theme into our digipacks to ensure they met the audienes needs and were created well.

We began by roughly drafting different ideas and different layouts and then annotating the elements we included to see if we had covered enough, to ensure we are consistently meeting the genre's codes and conventions and the audiences expectations.

First Draft

- as we can see, there are lots of different images here with a good combination of camera shots and angles. Our main focus was ensuring audience's could identify each band member thoroughly, by taking good quality photos, but also through the positioning in the frame. In the top left hand corner, we see the band positioned in there usual places while performing. We feel this image captures each band members role in the band, but also places the lead at the front as this is who audiences would recognise the most and relate too. As a common convention of the indie rock genre, instruments such as different styles of guitars (often a bass, acoustic or electric) and a drum kit are very common, particuarly with the band/song of our choice. We wanted to reinforce this aspect by placing an image of the set up, behind the place where the CD goes. We felt it was unessescary using an image of the band here as the CD would cover it and take away the focus. The bottom left hand corner image appears to be a collage of portfolio shots of each band member. We thought this mixed up the simple theme, and added a good twist to it by focusing on the band's faces rather than a full length shot or mid shot which is what we have included throughout. This is definitley an aspect we want to use in the final digi pack.

Second Draft

- this draft is very similar to the previous; the only differnece is that one of the images is different (top left hand corner) and the positioning of each image in what frame varies too. For this draft, we used the collage style of portfolio shots of each band member, as the front cover. As much as we love the idea of a collage style being involved in our digipack, we feel as a front cover, it draws the attention away from what we are trying to encode in our digi pack, which is ensuring the band are identified as a unity. Indie rock bands don't only perform together but are often best friends, go out together, tour together and so forth, and are often shown as a close band together. Therefore, this is what we wanted to show on the front image. Because of this, we believe this draft won't work as well as what we had anticipated therefore we wont be using it, but the rest of images and annotations we have provided e.g. black backgrounds to connote indie rock genre highlight the look we want our digi pack to have.

Third Draft

- Although we were pretty certain on using a six side digi pack, we wanted to explore using the four sides anyway just in case we liked it once we had finished drafting. We chose what we believed to be our best photographs or ideas, to be in the four sides. We chose a plain mid shot of the band members together as the front cover, as this identifies them as a group but also is a direct shot as they are looking at the camera which will create a personal relationship with the audience. As much as we felt it was important to do this, we still are much more fond of the six side digi pack.

First Mock Up

We used our initial ideas, favourite images and ideas to create our first rough mock up of what our digi pack should look like. We're really happy with the outcome of where and how the images are placed together and we love the design on the two inside covers. With two band members been combined with 3 images out of 6 on each side. Each image is different but we feel it really enables the audience to identify each band member in full, but also as a band. The combinations of shots, angles and designs used really gives our digi pack a twist, which adds edge which is what the genre is all about.

Front Cover