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

Advert Conventions

Above are a few digipak adverts for well known artists such as Wretch 32, Kings of Leon and Kasabian. The adverts all have similarities and differences in the colour themes, style, fonts and images used. They all however, are effective at promoting the artist or band in a number of ways. 

A common convention is to have the digipak style or image incorporated in the advert, this is evident in all of the above as they either use the same photo on the digipak for the advert, or have the digipak itself evident on the advert; this is evident on Wretch 32's advert as the album is featured on the bottom left. Having the album artwork incorporated with the advert allows the record company to promote the album easily, as the audience will see what the album looks like so will be able to recognize it when shopping in music stores such as HMV or iTunes. Due to popularity of adverts having the same image or similar artwork on the digipak our advert must also include either a small image of the front panel of the digipak, or use the same image. This will hopefully make the advert have a more professional look and will allow the audience to easily recognize the advert and digipak as they should look similar.

The adverts from Wretch 32 and Kings of Leon both have promotional text such as 'Out Now' or 'Available At...', these are often a larger size than the majority of the text. This therefore makes the text stand out and will essentially cause the audience to go and buy the album from a shop such as HMV or iTunes, as the information saying where to buy it will let them know easily where they need to go to get the music. I think our advert will incorporate some sort of promotional text such as Out Now as it can help promote the band's music, and will entice the fans to go and buy the album as it is available to them.

Having text which shows quotes from well known companies such as NME, Q and quality newspapers like The Daily Mail and Telegraph can also promote the band to the public and current fans. The Noel Gallagher advert is an example of this as it has a quote from the Telegraph saying 'the best collection of Noel Gallagher tunes since...', this shines a positive light on the album as a well known and trusted newspaper is saying how good the music is in the album. This will also persuade people to buy the bands music, as having feedback from the likes of NME, Q or The Telegraph will offer a stable judgement of the music for possible buyers. These quotes may be part of our advert, as having an opinion of the music will show the audience how someone already likes the content, so this may persuade people to also buy the album.

Noel's Own Digipak Advert

Whilst researching the conventions and typical styles used for adverts in music magazines Jay came across this advert for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. This will give the group a helpful advantage when creating our own music magazine advert, as we can follow and contrast ideas from this advert with the one we shall create. 

The two main parts of this advert is the image of Noel, and the text saying the bands name. This is because the image of Noel is the same one used for one of the bands digipaks, this is the same with the font used for the bands name too. Having these components of the advert being the same to the digipak aids the band in promotion and advertising, as the audience can recognize the imagery used from the digipak of the band.  Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds iconography of the image and especially the band font will therefore be considered when creating our advert, as we too will use the same font used on the digipak and the same photo used to try and make it look professional. 

The advert obviously promotes the bands album, however it is also an effective method for advertising any tour dates, upcoming singles and ways to contact or read up on the bands activity. The advert has clearly stated 'UK Arena Tour 2012' in white font, which is also slightly larger than the surrounding text, this may have been done to attract viewers to notice there will be a tour; which will generate large amounts of income for the band. The text showing the website for the band (link) has been added to show fans where they can go online to see the latest news on the band and any other promotional media such as videos of the band rehearsing or giving interviews. This method of advertising adds to the exclusivity of the band as when fans visit their website and watch videos of them it can create loyalties from fans to the band as the fans are finding out more about their favourite musicians. 

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.

Final Cut Basic Editing

 The image on the right is the viewer box, this is on the right hand side of the screen when Final Cut is running. It shows a preview of the final video with the added effects and transitions, this photo has the MTV Rocks logo, a song title box and a widescreen effect, which when played is black and not white. Having this preview screen is useful for when making a video as it allows the user to quickly view how the video will look with the effects, and therefore editing the video is easier with this tool as you can edit the video in stages.

Mark In/Out

This is the video upload section or browser on Final Cut. It shows a list of all footage captured and uploaded from the camera to Final Cut, so therefore the footage can be viewed in the left screen of the program. The list on the image is the different clips we had from filming with Glenn, and from there the user drags the clip to left hand screen so that particular shots can be selected for use in the video. Once the desired shot is on the left canvas, you then select the clip by clicking the letter 'I' (mark in) and 'O' (mark out) to choose where the shot starts and ends. The image above on the right's blue lines illustrate what footage is selected.

Once the desired shot has been selected by using the 'I' and 'O' keys the clip is then dragged to the main track with the rest of the video and audio track. This is then seen on the middle box on the screen, which is called the viewer, this is used to view the footage and select parts for the actual video. Once the desired clip has been selected it will look like the image on the right; a blue rectangle with a thumbnail image of the shot on the main track.

Audio Track

The music video also needed an audio clip of the actual song, the process of adding this to the video was simple. Matt simply opened the file of the song we wanted, then dragged it to the time line. The audio is noticed through the green bar, this makes it easy to differentiate between audio and video. Once the audio and video clips have been opened on Final Cut the screen will look like the image below, with both tracks being together on the timeline.

During the construction stages the editing had to be cut to a certain lyric or beat of the song, this meant detailed scaling of each clip so that it fitted the song. To make this easier we made the track a larger size, this was done by selecting a tab on the bottom left of the Final Cut screen, seen on the right. We simply selected a larger box out of the choices, which made the whole track larger so editing was easier as we could see the small gaps which had to be filled.