Print Work Mock Up

[Digipak]

This is my digipak mock up for Scarlet Pills' hypothetical album "Lights and Sounds" featuring "Headlights" and its corresponding music video. Because this is a mock, I have predominantly used internet and facebook images here, since it was too difficult to organise a mock photo-shoot with all my required actors and as this was a mock, perfect images were not totally necessary as this was purely testing layout and design. Despite this I did create the new band logo from scratch and some photos of individual band members are first hand too. All internet images I did use were fully manipulated to suit my requirements to the point where the little resembled their original state.

Even though this was a mock up I decided to play very close attention to the details of the design and included aspects that one might skim over when designing. As I have designed professional style products such as CD covers and cards before, I am used to including these elements and understand the structure in placement. On the reverse of the case I included elements such as the disclaimer (modified to fit my artist and label), website addresses for both the band and label, the BBFC exemplification logo, DVD video logo, my personal record label logo, and two recent logos appearing on new CDs; NTSC and a flattened globe. I also included the obvious bar code, with subtle detail that each number represents a letter;

18 - R   15 - O   24 - X   20 - T   1 - A   18 - R, which correlates to my personal music label "roxtar media and videos". 

I also added a short piece of text on the CD tray, behind the CD giving more brief information such as album title, genre, label, producer, editor, year and again the band website. This is placed behind the CD so when it is taken out, the viewer's attention is directly taken to it. On the inside left panel of the digipak I decided an entire band image was required to give a strong link between them and the album itself, next to this image I put the lyric sheet of the featured music video song "Headlights" as a further feature piece. As this design had to represent both the band and their work, as well as keeping strong connotations and themes with the featured video I decided there should be two links that could alter. Firstly I chose a title which suited both aspects, "Lights and Sounds". This linked with the car crash theme, as well as the "sounds" of the artists other work. Visually I then split the album into two themes, the band and bright lights. This is to suit the disk designs, the full audio disk displaying the band, and the dvd with a slow shutter speed photo of headlights. In the digipak design I then tried to merge these two elements tastefully while also showing the band logo as much as possible (since this is an unknown upcoming band). On the inside left panel I used a whole band image in relatively high glossy contrast, to suit the blurred headlights image behind (same as on disk 2), where on the covers I used just one character unrelated to the band to avoid them becoming too repetitive, imprisoned within walls of blurred lights, staring at car headlights. This gave redundant relevance to the featured song "Headlights" while keeping an air of entropy to the rest of the album, linked only by the album title. I also compiled a list of all their 2010 releases and ordered them into a play list which I felt flowed both in titles and sound, this brings the product closer to a professional feel. Overall I feel this mock up is extremely successful and should be far better in the final design. 

[Advert]

This is my magazine advert, which I decided to do in a standard dimension so it can be scaled between landscape A5, A6 and even A7 which are some of the most common sizes. Even though this contains few elements of the digipak cover, they relate well together with the common theme of burred lights, the band logo and the clear title "Lights and Sounds". I decided to do them somewhat differently as in designing I didn't want 

the band on the cover, because I felt they should be shown on the inner left panel. This was to allow a slightly entropic cover to draw interest from the audience, and to refrain from overusing the band image. On this advert though I felt it important that the band should be shown, and therefore had to connect these two print pieces together with the elements of text and colour themes such as the logo, album title, blurred lights and theme of orange black and white. To make these aspects stand out I made the band logo very big and angled, spreading off the page connoting a rebellious style. I also angled and added perspective to the album title below the band name to draw attention and connote a very active feel. At the bottom of this advert I included two reviews from leading music magazines for authenticity with corresponding star rating. I also included the release date and another copy of the relevant website addresses as these are important details for the advert, for the release date I followed the angle and style of the album title, to draw attention and keep it in style with the design. For the band photo, I did not have a collective image and so had to form one of my own through photoshop, this band image includes 16 various elements compiled together to create a suitable and aesthetically pleasing pose. Overall I feel this is another successful design, and positively promotes both CD and band.