Changing The CD

Whilst looking at the panels which create the digipak we decided a plain black background behind the CD looked rather bland. So we opted to put a background of the tunnel's wall behind the CD, this was done to continue the image of the other inside panel which is the wall of the tunnel and guitar Glenn used. Therefore the panel aids in connoting a house style as the digipak shows a range of locations used as well the character which therefore promotes the band.

Our digipak Compared To Others

Once the front cover for the digipak was complete I decided to place it next to a few other digipaks to see how it compares. 

The digipak seen in the middle of them is our own, and we feel it has a professional yet unique style compared to the others shown. The colours stand out clearly from the rest of the other digipaks,  this we feel will make the digipak stand out whilst on a shop shelf, thus attracting more people to buy it from the band.  

I then proceeded to print out the inside panel and CD design so that the group could see what it would look like in real life.

Layout of Digipak

This is the finalised digipak for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds music album. We feel as a whole the digipak has a house style, as the same colour theme and fonts should make it a simple task for the audience to recognize how they fit together. The top images are the back panel (left) and front cover (right). We then have the disc and an inside panel on the bottom two panels.

The three photos for the front, back and inside panels are all featured in the video at some point. The group and I chose to include these locations so that the digipak can be linked to the music video and therefore promote the band.

3D Layout of Digipak

The above design was created by opening a plain digipak template to Photoshop, then adding our own digipak designs. To make the 3D effect work efficiently however, the designs for the front cover, CD and disc panel had to be 'distorted' so that the design would fit the template. This gives an insight to how the digipak would look when opened by a possible buyer. 

Final Cover

During the construction stages of the digipak advertisement Jay said how he thought the font used for the band title was rather bland. The group discussed and agreed to change the font as a more rugged text will make the whole cover more exciting, even though it is a different style to what the band use. Jay searched the website dafont.com to find a new and improved style, and found this font which is called 'bitume'. Overall the group and I believe the cover is much more effective as the rough style of the text fits more to the Alt Rock genre which Noel Gallagher is part of. This is because Alt Rock is known for its unique characters and styles, therefore the rough styled font we feel is more suitable.

Inside Panel

After looking at some other inside panels in digipaks from Plan B, Professor Green and Oasis the group and I noticed how all of them had very simple inside panels. We thought it would be best if we followed this idea, and decided to have a single image on the panel which would represent the band and music video. I remembered when filming I took some photos of the guitar in a tunnel we filmed in, and began looking through for any photos which could be used. 

Once I chosen a photo; which was of the main body of the guitar, I decided to edit the image to make it look clearer and more vibrant. I began by once again adding the linear burn gradient which has been used through-out. I then changed the brightness (+4) and contrast (+15), which made the guitar stand out from the wall, as the yellow from the guitar became brighter and deeper in colour.

Once the image was edited to the groups liking, we then had to decide on whether to use any text or not on for the inside panel. Whilst looking at other examples we found varied styles, with one from Olly Murs showing tour dates, and Plan B having a photo of himself and nothing else. I then opted to simply add a website for the band on the panel, this gives the design something other than the instrument he used, as it allows the user to see where they can go online to find out more about the band. For this I used the same font used on the back panel for the legal content, which is calibri in white with a black stroke of 2, this hopefully aids the style created through-out the digipak as matching text will be more recognizable. 

Finished Inside Panel

CD Design

I began by finding a template of a CD on the internet, saving it and then opening it on Photoshop. I wanted to use a basic design as I knew a gradient would more than likely be added so that the disc follows the style created on the panels of the digipak. 

Template

 I then added the gradient we used on the rest of the panels to the disc, this was completed by using the magic wand tool and selected the inside of the disc template. I then dragged the gradient line from the top left to bottom right (shown below). The outcome shows how the CD goes from a turquoise to orange which is used on all of the panels on the digipak.

Adding the Gradient

 Once the gradient was in place on the CD I then added the text of the band name, song title, record company and Noel's website. I followed the style of the real Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds disc design with the text layout, this is because the layout is simple and yet professional as the band has used this layout too. The difference between our CD and the bands is that we have used the gradient, where as the band have a plain white disc with black text.  

Choosing the band font (Coaster)

Here is the finished design for the CD, the group and I are pleased with the outcome as we believe it can be easily recognized when it's with the digipak. This means we have followed the convention of using a house style across the digipak, this will hopefully make it easy for people to match our digipak to the advertisement and the music video with the images we have used. 

CD With New Text

Idea One (Back) Improvements

Here is the back panel of our digipak which has been re-edited. After group discussion we thought that the whole image should have the same gradient used for the cover to keep a house style for the digipak. Matt then said how the legal content may look more effective at the bottom of the panel, myself and Jay agreed with this once I had placed the text there and changed it to white, as well as adding a black stroke.I then underlined the song titles, this was purely experimental as it was not planned, but is also used on Noel's album, overall the group think it looks more original with the underlined text, as it helps to separate the text from the rest of the image. 

Below shows a comparison of the previous back panel and the new and improved design.

Idea Two (Front) Improvements

After some group discussion and opinions from classmates the group and I decided that we should use a gradient of turquoise and orange on our digipak front panel. The reason behind this change is that the original cover is rather bland, with little colour which reduces the boldness which we feel a cover should have; so that it attracts the audience to buy it when it's on a shop shelf etc. Although we already have a design with a gradient used, that design was far too strong, as classmates and ourselves thought it was 'a bit too much' as the strong colours took away from the actual photo.

Here is the improved cover, the gradient used has a lower opacity and the lighting option of the gradient was changed from 'colour burn' to 'linear burn', this toned the whole gradient down so it wasn't as bold as before.  We all agreed that this cover was much more effective for our digipak, as we feel it has a balance of colour so that the photo is still recognizable as Glenn looking out to the life of London. I also added an underline to the song title AKA...What A Life, so that it stands out from the dark background is on, and because it gives the text a more handwritten style, which is evoked on Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds album and single digipaks.

Idea One (Back)

Here is the first design for the back panel of the digipak. I opted to use this image as it is a shot from the video, thus enhancing our house style from video to the digipak. I began by using the font 'mistral' for the song titles, and added a small stroke to the text so it stands out from the background. Using this font would therefore connote the same style of the front panel which helps the target audience notice the digipak is for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. After researching many digipaks from home and the internet I thought adding a barcode would be a necessity to make it look more professional, as every hard copy of a music album has one. I then proceeded to add the record company 'Sour Mash' to the bottom right of the panel, as this shows the record label to which the music belongs. I chose a font called 'Boingo' for the text of the record company, as it similar to the real font used by Sour Mash, yet it is still slightly different which adds to our own style for the digipak. I then changed the stroke colour to white for this font, so that it is easily read as the style may be difficult for some to read if it was plain black. 

Changing The Vibrance 

Once the text and barcode was in place, I wanted to change the vibrance of the photo. This was done by selecting 'image', then 'saturation/vibrance', I then moved the vibrance up to +23. This makes the colour deeper and crisper, which I believe makes the overall image look more professional. The deeper colours also make it easier to notice and read the text for the song titles etc. 

Here is what I thought was the finished design for a possible back panel for the digipak. Overall at this stage I was pleased with the general style and look of the panel. However Jay then noticed that many of the albums he has shows some form of legal content, which includes who owns the copyright of the song and album artwork. As a group we then decided that adding a small paragraph of legal content would complete the professional style of the digipak.

Idea Three (Front)

The third idea is very similar to the second idea for the front panel of the digipak. However instead of using the turquoise and orange gradient, I edited theContrastBrightnessVibranceof the image. I chose not to use the gradient for this idea because the gradient dominates the whole image, and would therefore need to be used on all of the panels to follow the house style we want to illustrate in the digipak. 

I made the image slightly brighter, so that it would overall look a lot cleaner and recognizable. The brighter image is strongly noticeable compared to the original photo, as the walkway and sky is lighter, making the text bolder and easily readable. I then increased the contrast, so that the green from the building on the left would give the image stronger colour, as it is fairly plain without it. The vibrance change worked well with the edited contrast, as both together work so that the photo has deeper colour which is needed for this particular image as without the change it would look rather bland. 

Idea Two (Front)

Here is a second possible album cover, we wanted to keep the fonts the same through-out our digipak so adding the font to this image was simple. I also used the same gradient which was used for the previous design, however before adding it I changed the opacity to 28%, this made the gradient more visible but still subtle. I then repeated this process by adding a second gradient over the current, so that the orange was more noticeable. Jay also suggested to change the type of gradient from 'normal' to 'colour burn', this gives the gradient a deeper look and makes the green and orange stand out.

I then wanted to try a different effect on the title font, as before we used a drop shadow only. In this design I added a stroke and contour to the font, which made it slightly bolder which the group and I think needs to be done as it is above a light background.

The idea behind the photo used is to hopefully connote part of our video, as in it our character (Glenn) is traveling around numerous parts of London, so when taking this photo I wanted to portray how he is actually moving over the city through the notion of walking.

Idea One (Front)

I began to use Photoshop to create some potential digipak front covers. I started by choosing a simple photo which was of the guitar Glenn used whilst filming in the tunnel. I then added the gradient which Jay had created before-hand; this was a turquoise colour fading into orange. Before applying the gradient to the photo I changed the opacity of the gradient to around 20%, this was so it wasn't too bold and was still subtle.

The next stage was to add the text of the band "Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds" and the song title "AKA...What A Life" to the cover. The group and I agreed to use the fonts Coaster and Mistral for the text on the page, as both looked similar to what is used for Noel's artwork yet still looked unique for our work. We also wanted to follow Noel's style by having a smaller sized "o" with an underline beneath it. To achieve this we highlighted the "o", then chose the "superscript" option below the font options on the right hand side of the screen.

Below is a potential idea for our digipak, we wanted to keep a simple style through-out with the cover as we feel it is difficult to represent the song title "What A Life" with a single image. For this design we opted to have the guitar used for the song, as it promotes the instruments used by Noel to create the song. I also changed the rotation of the "AKA...What A Life" slightly as many of the other fonts on Noel's singles have slightly slanted font as it is handwriting, which is scrawly. I then decided that adding a stroke to both texts would make them stand out more from the wall in the background.