Digipak Edits and Audience Questionnaire

After researching professionally made digipaks/CD packs I designed my own digipak for my artist, including songs, in a variety of colours. 

Once I had made an array of colour combinations, I made a questionnaire in order to receive some audience feedback from my target audience. I did this as I wanted to know which sort of album would appeal most to the people that would potentially be buying it - allowing to make any necessary changes to my digipak before completion.

These are the questions I asked, along with providing pictures for each digipak.

Digipak Draft

This is the cover design I originally drew before digitally creating my Digipak.

This is my front cover I have designed for my digipak. I kept it quite simple, as do most pop albums, using a head shot of my artist/character, including his name and album title. I chose the name "Illustration" as I wanted the album to be an illustration of the artist's life. As it would be his debut album it would allow his audience to get to know him better. People often feel more endeared to buying something if they know more about it and the background behind it, hence my decision for this.



Here we have the back cover of my digipak design. Once again very simple, incorporating all the song titles that are featured on the album along with a music company logo, barcode and general information that is always shown on an album. I made up all the song names, barr "Photograph", which I listed as the first one shown. This was to make people continue reading after they see a song they are familiar with.


Next is the inside of the digipak

As it open's up you see one blank side and one side with a ripped up photograph on. This is in reference to my music video. It also reference's the song choice "Photograph". I kept the left side blank as Pop albums don't generally go over the top on decorating the inside, but rather pick a colour scheme. At the current time I have decided to pick black and white/cream as it is gender natural and can match any other colours I may want to add

On the inside I will keep the centre square black and the two side boxes white. I didn't feel it was necessary at all to over edit my digipak as that isn't a convention that is generally cosistent or popular in the pop genre.

Music Magazine Advertisement Draft

This is my draft design for my Magazine Advertisement. 

I will be using a similar photo of my artist to the one used on my digipak, similar to artists such as Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes who have experience in the field of music and the same target audience as my artist.

As shown above the first thing that will be noticeable as you view the advertisement is the close up headshot of my artist. I want this to be the first thing seen as, not only is it a staple design feature used in most pop advertisements, it will allow the audience to see what the artist looks like. The artist will be smiling and look layed back, in order to make the audience feel comfortable and interested in him. If he was screaming for example it could put off  some people and as soon as they look at the advertisement they would have a distaste for it. The artist will be wearing a smart shirt, whilst not having the top buttons done up to create a relaxed feeling and not to be to uptight.

The next noticeable thing is the artist's name. I plan to use a bold font, whilst not to aggressive as to suggest a more rock genre. I want it to look as if the writing was hand written, to match the idea of the album being illustrated. Bold artist names being noticeable are a big convention in pop music advertisements. Each artist seems to have their own distinguishable font used on their albums and advertisements, most noticeably artists such as Jessie J, making them unique. I want the illustrated idea to be that for my artist, without looking too unprofessional and messy

 The other writing shown says "Illustrated" which is the album title, and "Hit Single 'Photograph' ". This is another convention I found whilst researching advertisements that pop artists generally use. By naming a popular, well known song featured on the album the target audience is more enticed into buying the album.

I will also include an image of my alum cover. This was only used on a few of the advertisements I researched but I believe it would attract the audience further and help them know what they should look out for.

At the top I have included a black information bar which will have the logo in one corner and all necessary information in the other. Although a bar wasn't used in many advertisement, I thought it made it look smarter and went along with my colour theme and kept the bottom of the page from looking too clustered. It prevents to much small print taking up unnecessary space, as many people don't read it.

Music Video Editing

Whilst editing my music video I took some screenshots, using the "Prnt Sc (Print Screen)" button, to show the process an explain how I did what I did. They are shown below.

My first screenshot is a zoomed out shot to present all the cuts I made to make the transitions between shots match the tempo and beats of the music. This was taken half way through editing so there was a lot more once I had finished. To the left you can see a list of images, these are the shots I imported in to the editing software from the camera. At the top right is a singular image of the main character walking. This allowed me to watch the video as I was editing to make sure everything was how I wanted it.

This second screenshot shows how I edited the song itself to shorter the duration of the video and trying to make sure the music still smoothly blended together. There was a segment of the song that increased the length whilst I had nothing to place in that area. The beats of the music around this area where duplicated from the previous line of lyrics so I removed this area. As it was repeated I was able to make the music smoothly continue without making it obvious some of the song had been cut out.

In this shot you can also set a closer up view of some of the cutting I did to make the transitions match the beats of the music

This clip shows a technique I used to edit the length of some shots. While for most shots I used the crop tool to edit the shots to my desired size, for some others I was able to drag the clip along when a red bar popped up as I scrolled my mouse over it. This allowed me to make the shot the exact length I needed it to be by re-adding cropped out areas.

The next tool I used was called "Scale to Frame Size". When imported in to the editing software the clips I had filmed were cropped to fit the size of the editing screen. By using the Scale to Frame Size tool, the shots returned to the original size and fitted everything in, rather than being cropped and missing out vital parts of the video. Scale to Frame size is found under the "Video Options" section in the "Clip" drop down bar.

This screenshot shows the tool I to create my time-lapse. The shot was originally 1 hour long but by increasing the speed on the editing software I was able to create a time-lapse and insert it at the beginning of my video. By increasing the speed from 100 to 10000 the clip almost doubled in speed, which I then cropped to fit the gap at the start of my music video.