Digipak & Poster Font

Throughout my research on what font I wanted to use on my digipak, I had decided that I would like to go for a more handwritten look as this fits better with my chosen genre, however, I now believe that a bolder font may be best as it would be a lot clearer for the consumer to read.

I decided that the font below is the font I would like to use on both my digipak and my magazine advert.  Here is an example of how it may look:

Digipak Draft

Here's a WIP of my digipak. I still need to add several elements such as the barcode, the explicit content label and a design for the CD, but I am happy with how it is looking so far. 

While researching other digipak's in my chosen genre, I found that they stuck to the same colours, and so I complied to this when making my own digipak. I obtained inspiration from bands such as the Arctic Monkeys and The 1975 as I liked the simplicity that their album covers held.

Digipak Template

I downloaded a free digipak template from a website named 'Disc Markers'. The template gives me a guideline of how to lay out my photos for my digipak (including the sizing) and where I need to place each individual photo. 

So far this is what I have put together:

For the moment I have only chosen the style of my front cover and the font I am using, but I am still planning and researching what I can use on the other sections of my digipak. I would like to go with a fairly simplistic design as I feel that it goes with my chosen genre, and will still attract my audience, especially as I have decided to go with fairly bright colours. I do not want my digipak to be too busy as this would distract the audience from the artist on the front cover.

Mac 4 Final Music Video

Digipak Inspiration

The Arctic Monkeys & The 1975 were large inspirations of mine when it came to creating my digipak due to the simplicity of their album covers. They do not give much away as to what the band are like as they have no images of themselves, but this almost intrigues the audience as to what kind of music they produce. 

I was interested in using dark colours but to make mine stand out and link it in some ways to my album name, I decided that I wanted to use some colour. To add onto that, although I have planned my album cover to be very simple, I would also like to include an image of my artist on the front cover. Along with the colours, I feel like the word 'Spectrum' would go well with multiple images of my artist. 

Bands & Their Chosen Names

While researching my chosen genre during the creation of my digipak, I became intrigued into the reason why some artists/bands chose their stage names. Here are a few examples:

Lorde (also known as Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor) chose her artist name due to being fascinated with "royals and aristocracy". However, she felt that the word 'Lord' was too masculine and so added an 'e' to the end to make it more feminine. 

Birdy's stage name (also known as Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde) comes from the nickname her parents gave her as a baby, because she opened her mouth like a little bird when being fed.

Foster The People: Mark Foster originally named the band Foster & the People, but people misheard it as "Foster the People". Eventually, he took to the nurturing image it evoked of "taking care" of people, so the name stuck.

Goffman's Theory (1972) - Gender Representations in Advertising

In the portrayal of men and women, advertising often uses the following codes and conventions:

• Superiority, Domination & Body Language: Men are shown in dominant positions and appear to be reflective of thought and intelligence. Women are physically portrayed in sexual or reclining poses with blank or inviting expressions. 

• Dismemberment: On females, parts of the body such as legs, chest, etc., are used, rather than the full body. This is often applied to sell products which are not related to the body, such as mobile phones (right) 

• The Voice-Over Authority: In moving image advertisements, male voices are used as voice-overs in commercials rather than females.

Evaluation Questions

In the evaluation the following four questions must be addressed:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Lorde - Green Light

I found the music video for Lorde's new song 'Green Light' very interesting as the main focus was on her performance, not on the narrative. The shots are relatively long but this works well as she is mainly singing. I particularly liked the changes of scenes/environment and the different colours that are used.