Digipak and Magazine Advert Editing

I made the Digipak and Magazine Advert using Photoshop. I tried to be creative in my use of Photoshop and tried to link the style I was intending to make for the artist, which is Emeli Sandé and the genre that I was doing which was pop. The artist, Emeli Sandé, challenges the generic conventions of pop - as stereotypically pop digipaks and adverts are bright and colourful whereas she uses black and white, using brand identity throughout with font, colours and the camera angle used.

For the digipak back cover, I made a black cover to suit the black and white colour scheme. I made a shape of a square and edited the shape to create a Gradient Overlay where I made a white circle in the centre and spreading out. The above image is an early prototype of the back cover as I decided not to use the text or text colour.

I took a logo from the internet for the record company that will appear at the bottom of the digipak. I highlighted the logo with the magic wand tool, coloured it in white and copied it onto the digipak. I adjusted the size so that it would be correctly sized at the bottom of the digipak.

I created a barcode online on a barcode generator website and have included this at the bottom of my digipak.

The copyright information I used was on the back of one of Emeli Sandé existing album’s, which is:

‘℗&© 2012 Virgin Records Ltd. All rights of the producer and the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, renting, public performance and broadcasting of this record prohibited. Printed in the E.U.’

This is what the back cover looks like so far. I added the track list in its place and I changed the font of the text to suit the style of the artist. The font for the copyright information is different so that it differentiates to the reader that the information is of a different type.

The flowers and the peace symbol connote the themes that were present in the music video and the flowers provide the only colour on the back cover of the digipak.

I photographed the flowers myself to add to the digipak. To add the flowers, I highlighted them with the magic wand and added them in. I free transformed them, so that I could reduce the size of the flowers to the right size.

I used the pen tool to make a drawing path of a swirl. This will then be overlaid with the brush tool to make a permanent mark of the path onto the digipak. As the swirl was a bit faded, I layered more of them to make them bolder.

I repeated the swirls on the top and bottom of the digipak by transforming the shape and reversing the direction.

I added more swirls to the corners of the image for decorative effect and to provide balance to the image.

This shows the path after it has been painted in the right hand corner.

This is the final version of the back cover. I removed some of the flowers and the peace symbols so that the back cover is simpler.

For the front cover, I used a studio image - which I took with the help of an assistant – of myself as the artist. Above is the image opened in Photoshop.

I made the image black and white to suit the style of the artist. I then cropped the image so that the image extended out more so that it is a square rather than a portrait image.

This created a white edge as I had cropped the extra space to the image.

To make the white edge the same colour as the background of the main image, I used the clone stamp tool to blend in the white area. The colour needed being cloned from the original background to fill in the white area.

I then used the eraser tool on the black and white overlay, so that the colour on the original image is showing through. This is called colour splashing. I wanted a section of colour to be brought out so that there is a focal point on the front cover, which would link to the generic conventions of pop digipaks.

This is what the digipak looks like after colouring the flowers in. I have also added the text for the front cover which is the same font as the track list on the back cover. The peace symbols have been added and are a common theme throughout the music video and the digipak.

On the black and white layer that I have erased to bring out the flowers, I applied ‘Gaussian Blur’ as the lines at the edge of the flowers were sharp and stood out on the image. The Gaussian Blur fades these lines.

For making the CD, this is the outline of the CD that I am going to use. I erased the outlines that I don’t need.

I added the peace symbol onto the CD, which I made white to stand out on a black background. I painted the black background using the brush tool that has a soft edging.

I painted to the outline of the CD so that it is even and that the CD fits the outline on the final layout.

I inserted the covers onto the final layout, with the inside cover using a shot that is in my music video of the sun and the sky. The CD is added into place and there still needs to be the background of the inside cover to be placed.

This is the final version of the digipak. The top two images are of the inside cover, the bottom left is the back cover and the bottom right is the front cover of the digipak. Also note the spine of the digipak is in place which details the artist’s name, album name and the record company. This information is conventionally placed such, for ease of recognition when stored.

For editing the magazine advert, I used the same imagery and setting as I did for the front cover of my digipak and used the same editing style for the advert.

I used a different image from the digipak front cover but used the same studio setting and black and white colour scheme. For the text, I used the same font style and placed the production logo at the bottom of the advert.

I included the names of some of the songs that are on the album and the website was added for the audience to access for further information. I made the title the same as on the digipak by having a line underneath the artist’s name.

I added a picture of the front cover of the digipak to the advert so that the audience would know what the front cover would look like in order to buy it; as the main purpose of an advertisement is to make the audience buy the album. I added a border to the image so that the image doesn’t blend into the advert.

I added colour to the advert by including a release date, ‘Out Now’, that is in orange, the same colour as the flowers in the digipak. This is bold and is the same font as the rest of the text.

I improved the singles text by making the song titles bolder so that they stand out compared to the rest of the text and the ‘OUT NOW’ release date. This is the final advert for advertising my digipak. I have tried to keep to the conventions of adverts and stay true to the style of the artist, Emeli Sandé.