Editing software

This is something I worked on too get familiar with the software I will be using to create my albums digipak. I wanted to play around and learn some new techniques such as the layering techniques and creating vector masks. I really like the look of creating vector masks from parts of images, layering the vector masks and fading them out. I created vector masks from an image of my cousin painted as a skeleton, I also made vector masks from pictures of a clock, my painting of a rose and some flowers I had. For the background image I went to the coast road in Severn Beach/ Piling at night, I had the camera set on to a firework setting, this means that the shutter speed is slowed down, meaning the camera will capture movement as more is being absorbed. The movement in the picture is lights from cars and lorries. Because the lens is open for a longer time and all movement is being captured this leads to the light creating a line that drags across the whole image. I really like the look of the light being dragged across the page and like how I have edited the lights a purple colour that goes with the colours of the flowers. I really enjoyed using these techniques and think i will try some of them on my actual cover and digipak.

Evanescence digipak analysis

I decided to look deeper into the genre of the music I would be promoting in the video and digipak. I looked at other digipaks to see if there was a certain theme or rule that occured in rock/punk album covers.

Because I'm promoting a female artist in this project, I started looking at covers done by bands that had a female vocalist.

• This is the album from Evanescence, called 'Fallen' which was released on the 4th of March 2003. This cover followed many things that I have seen on other albums from other genres, such as having a close up shot female's face on the cover and having the name of the artist and the name of the album centred on the top. 
• With the name of the artist and of the album, I liked how the little design around the text connected them and made them look like they went together instead of having them put on as two seperate pieces of text. 
• I thought the look of the females face was quite intense, and thought that by having only her eyes in focus added to the intensity of her expression. The colour scheme of this album was something that made me interested in looking deeper at it, the only colours are blue, black and white which are all dull colours with sad and dark connotations. 
• The colour levels have been enhanced making the dark colours darker and making the light ones even lighter, making them contrast and giving the skin on the female a sort of glowing skin. I like how they have put a little black design around the cover and changing the opacity levels, making some parts strong and stand out where as other parts sort of faded into the background. 
• I found it strange that they put the design over part of her eyebrow hiding the piercing she had there. I thought they ghostly and intense look of the female along with the dark and dull colour scheme and even the name 'Fallen' sets the tone for the album, showing that the music inside may be dark and instense and may even touch on the subject of death (ghostly look of female). From being a fan of the band I know that they have decided to put Amy Lee on the cover who is the vocalist, instead of having a picture of the whole band, by singling her out I feel that they are trying to suggest that she may be the front man and may lead people to the conclusion that could be the most important member. I really like the look of this cover and even though it does follow conventions of other albums that have a female vocalist, they do it in such a different and dark way that although it is just a picture of the vocalist, it has a lot of emotion and shows the band and the music style.

• This is the centre fold of the digipak, on this page it feautres something that artists often put in digipaks called 'Thank yous' this is where the members take it in turns to list people in their life who they want to thank. For this digipak they have put the text in a black vertical box with white text. The white on black contrasts and makes the text visible. 
• I think it was a good idea to put the text in a black box because otherwise it would be lost in the background. All of the pictures used in the digipak are from the same photoshoot and have had simliar editing. The colour scheme throughout the digipak is blue, black and white and the colours have been over enhanced to make them contrast and give the appearance of them not being human. 
• The band are all wearing black and have a similar facial expression. The clothing they are wearing looks like it could be a somewhat uniform and doesn't allow the band to show their personality throught their clothing. Because this is the centre fold of the digipak the band has been careful and haven't placed any ones face in the middle, because this will have the fold line and crease in it, going through their face, this is something that I should be careful with when designing my centre fold. 
• In the background in this picture is similar to the design that is dotted around on the cover of the album, that went over Amy's face. I like how they have continued to use it in the rest of the cover and changes from being very dark and bold in some places to being very light and almost not visible in other places, just like it did on the cover. 
• Only two of the members are that visible in this picture. Two of the members are in the foreground and are in focus but the other two are just in the background and are blurred. I don't like how they have done this,as it almost looks like the two members in the background arent as important to the ones in the front and gives them the appearance of being distant from the other two. 
• I like how they have used the same photo shoot throughout the digipak and how they have used similar editing techniques and themes throught, showing that even if the pages get seperated that they belong together.

• This is the back of the digipak for the album 'Fallen' the back of the digipak features the other 3 members of the band who aren't shown on the cover because only Amy is, none of the members are looking at the camera on this picture where as Amy on the front cover is looking into it. 
• The member in the foreground is looking down and is even putting his hand up as if he's trying to cover up the camera. Only one of the members is in focus on this picture (the same one who is in the foreground with Amy on the centre fold) and the other two members are in the background, blurred out so much that you can't even see the expression on their faces.
• The members are all in dark clothing like they have been throughout the digipak. On both the left and right side of the picture there is text going down the page vertically, the text is the bands name, the album name and the label the band are signed with. I can see how it would be good to put this information down one side of the picture but don't see why it has been put down on both. 
• The producers who worked with the band on this album are listed on the bottom of the page but in very small font which isn't very visible. The track listing is something that is put on the back of most albums and usually takes up most of the room, but with this cover the track listing is very small and put on the limited black space there is, the font is in white and would have been lost on the picture so they have tried to place it on whatever black space is available but in return has made it really small, this has happened because they have decided to put a picture of the band on the back which is something that isn't usually done. 
• This album has the barcode on the back of the album, this is usually done because the main, big picture is put on the front of the album and the back is usually left quite plan so by putting the barcode on the back , it isn't covering any of the design on the front, but with this album it also has a picture on the back but have decided to keep the convention of keeping the barcode on the back. 

Second artist survey

I did two sperate surveys, one in town and the other at school. For each of the surveys I asked 30 people, making 60 responses in total. The light purple blocks on the graph are show the responses from town and the dark purple blocks show the responses of school. Because there was mixed views on the online survey I decided to do another survey and see if I could get a better idea of what people liked to see on Digipaks.

For the first question I asked "Do you prefer male or female vocalists?" overall female artists were the favoured gender of vocalist and had a total of 27 out of the 60 responses chose female. Male vocalists only had a total of 11 responses out of the 60, showing that the were the least favoured out of the options. I gave an option of 'doesn't bother me' to see if people were overly bothered about the gender, this response got a total of 22 responses. These results show me that people don't really mind about the gender of the artist but if they had to choose they would go with the female option.

For this question I asked "What do you like to see featured on the cover of a Digipak?" I wanted to see if people preferred to have a picture of the band on the cover or if they liked to see somwething different, such as graphics or pieces of art. 17 of the responses said that they liked to see a photograph of the band/artist on the cover, 19 of the responses said that they liked to see graphics and art on the cover, and the remainding 24 said that they would like to see a mixture of both photos and graphics, making the cover more like a collage. This shows me that most people have moved on from the old style of simply having the band on the cover and would like to see something different and interesting. I think to make my cover appeal to a wide audience I will include both the artist and some art.

For this question I asked "When buying an album, does the design of the cover influence your buy?" 15 of the resonses said that if they saw a cover that interested them that they would be influenced to buy it. 19 of the responses said that the cover didn't influence them, they would only buy an album for the band and the music. 25 of the responses said that they were sometimes tempted to buy an album if it had an interesting cover but the artist would have to be in the same genre of the music they usually listen to and that they would prefer to know a few songs of the artist.

Survey on artists

To find out what people liked to see on the cover of albums I made a survey on SurveyMonkey. Here are the results:

I asked "Do you prefer to listen to male or female vocalists?" 3 of the responses said that they preferred to listen to male vocalists, 2 of the responses said that they preferred to listen to female vocalists and 9 of the responses said that they didn't mind if the vocalist was male or female. This means that for my project I can use either male or female vocalists and it wouldn't affect the sale of the album.

For the second question I asked "When choosing an album, does the design of the cover influence your buy?" 4 of the responses said that the design of the cover does influence them when buying albums, 7 of the responses said that the cover doesn't influence them, and 3 of the responses said that sometimes the cover did influence them but other times it didn't. This shows me that a lot of the time people will buy an album regardless of what the cover of the album looked like if they liked the band. I think the mixed feelings show that people do take the cover of the album into consideration but if they liked the band then they will buy it regardless of the cover.

For the third question I asked "do you prefer to have a picture of the band/artist on the cover?" 4 of the responses said that they liked having a picture of the artist on the cover, 1 response said that they didn't like having a picture of the artist on the cover and 10 responses said that they weren't bothered about if there was a picture of the artist on the cover or not. Because there is a clear mixed feeling about pictures of the artist on the cover I think I will maybe mix mediums and use both a picture of the artist and some other pictures and graphics making it more of a collage.

For the next question I asked, "what do you like to see featured on an album cover?" most of the responses said that they liked to see things like band logos, eye catching artwork, name of the artist and the album, and impressive photography. This goes with the idea of making the cover a mix of art and photographs, and making the album a collage using a mix of mediums. I see that most of the responses said they wanted to see the name of the artist, and the album name on the cover and I think it is something I will include on the cover.



For the fifth question I asked "Do you prefer to buy hard copies of albums or legally download?" the responses showed me that although people preferred to have the hard copy, it is much easier for people to access and download them. Many said that the cost of albums is too much and even though they want to have the hard copy of the album, they can only afford to illegally download them. On downloaded albums (legal and illegal) only the album cover is download, not the actually digipak meaning that the audience who choose to download will not be able to see and read whats inside.

For this question I asked "how often do you buy albums?" many said that they didn't buy albums alot and downloaded them instead, and others said that whenever they go shopping and they see an album from an artist they like they will buy it. Most did say that they do download albums instead of buying them.



For the last question I asked "if the album cover attracted you, would you be willing to buy the album without knowing the artist?" many said that they would be tempted to buy an album they weren't familar to, but only if they were within the same genre of other artists that they listen to, and if they had heard of a few songs before hand but they wouldn't just buy an album because of the colourif it wasn't similar to music they listen to and if they had no idea who the artist was. 

These results show me that overall people don't really mind if they listen to male or female artists meaning that it doesn't matter what gender vocalist I use. On the cover most of the responses said that they would like to see a mix of photographs and graphics, I think I could combine art and photographs, and make the cover a sort of collage. People said that they would sometimes be influenced to buy an album based on the design of the cover but only if the artist was in the a similar genre of the type of music they usually listen to and if they had heard of the artist and a few of their songs, this shows that the cover of the album will help influence people buy an album but only if they were of a similar genre. 

Difference in genders

• I have been looking at the difference between male and female artists and wanted to see if by having a different gender if there would be different connotations and rules that were applied. 
• Most of the female covers I looked at, featured a close up shot the artists face, this usually came with bright backgrounds, mainly pink or white. The Florence and the Machine- Lungs album really stood out for me as it didn't follow the usual conventions of other female artists album covers. 
• Although the artist is on the cover she isn't looking deeply into the camera with her hair and makeup done with pink everywhere, instead she is looking down and posing, she has lungs hung from her neck which go in line with how they would go in the body. 
• The background of the cover is fairly dark, blues, purples and black are the main colours featured, there are splashes of bright colours such as pink and yellow in the background. I thought that the frame and overall layout of the cover somewhat reminded me of a Polaroid photo and thought it was a very unusual thing to be used on a cover.

• With the male artists, it was more graphics and photos of landscapes ect, other than picture of the artist, although there was many that did have pictures of the male artist. I thought that this Jay-Z one was really different from others I have seen, I really like how it is in black and white and has a monochrome scheme.
• I thought that the statues could represent how the album could some what become historical and how the artists fame has actually become historical. The album doesn't have a name shown on the cover and only shows the artists name, I really like how the name has a thick black line going through, its something I have never seen on a cover before and think it works well especially with the colour scheme of the cover.
• The only text on the cover are put in the centre to show that it is the main focal point. The colour scheme helps the album stand out when put on a shelf in a store because it will be one of the only albums that have no colour and it will interest people.