Digipack

The first thing I wanted to create was the CD cover, so I had a look at some existing CDs from other established artists to help me understand the conventions and to get some inspiration. Here are some examples:

I found that the majority of CD covers had some sort of relation to both the artists image, the music video, and the CD case cover. A lot of the covers that I saw were extremely basic, often a monotone background with a simple word or logo. In my music video, the "Tame" logo comes up on a black background, so I though I'd try making a pretty simple black CD with that logo. The shot I'm referring to is:

So, the first thing I did was to find a CD digipack template, and put it into photoshop. 

Once this was done, I created the CD cover

These were the first CD I created. On the first, I tried to have the logo centres, but because of the circular shape of the CD's centre, it looked like it was spelling "TAOME" which I didn't like, so for the second I moved it up. Although I liked them both, I felt they were a little boring, and didn't really say much about the artist, so I created a few more, each time changing them slightly. The first thing I did was to take some photos of my actor for the digipack. 

For me, the main part of the music video is the ending, where the actor is in the shower with the makeup being removed. I decided I wanted to use the photos I'd taken during the shooting of this scene for the CD cover. I tried a few different layouts and pictures:

After making the different drafts and changing things around, I decided my favourite was:

Now that I'd finished the CD cover, I needed to move on to create the rest of the digipack. This included the cover, back, and the left and right parts of the inside of the pack. The right side would be covered by the CD, so I decided to use the same graphic as the CD for that. I wanted the digipack to be quite simple, so I tried out some different looks. Firstly I looked at some digipacks of established artists:

On the previews below, the top left box is the cover, the top right in the back, and the bottom two boxes are the inside left and inside right.

And finally my final edit:

I really like the graphic I created for the back of the album, the lipstick kiss with the words "I'll find my own Bravado" inside them, this phrase is taken from the main lyrics of the song, and the graphic was inspired by the Pretty Green logo:

The Pretty Green logo's words were modelled around a circle, and my logo was modelled around the lips. The Pretty Green logo's words also come from a song, 'Pretty Green' by The Jam. This logo could be used for marketing and merchandising, for example the mockup of a t-shirt below. It can also be used for other marketing, for example, Will.i.am wearing a jacket with the question mark symbol from his music video Where is the Love (pictured below the tshirt image), this promotes the symbol, which makes it recognisable, promoting the album.

I then created 3D mockup to see how the whole digipack would look.

After doing these mockups, I found out that it needed to be a 6 panel digipack with a CD and DVD section. So I went about re-designing. I also decided that the "I'll find my own bravado" graphic didn't really fit with the rest of the design,  so I decided to remove it.

The first idea I had was to create a sleeve design for the front of the digipack which would hold the DVD within. I liked the idea of changing the front of it to be inside a plastic sleeve that when removed would have part of the front design on it, I created this graphic to illustrate my idea:

This would slide inside the front of the digipack, and would hold the DVD. It can also be used for other products, such as a Vinyl.

Now for the back, I needed to replace the graphic of the lips which my teacher and myself decided didn't fit the theme of the digipack. I decided I needed to look at some other CD backs and establish some conventions.

So from my research, I found that the main conventions I needed to include on my album back were:

• Track List
• Bar Code
• Web Domain
• Copyright Notice
• DVD/CD logos
• Institution Logo

Along with all of the conventions, I also used a photo I took during shooting as the background. This photo was purposely quite grainy and dark, which offers contrast to the bright, sharp front of the album - this contrast and juxtaposition represents the two halves of the character in the music video (i.e. male and female). This is also backed up by the consistent use of only half a face in all of the digipack photos.

I then made a few changes to the back. I made the copyright text smaller, and made the song names match the typography of the other text in the digipack (with the special A and with lines above and below, like the logo).

And the two disk designs. The CD and DVD, this final edit also has the copyright and institutional information on it: