Digipak evaluation

Digipak evaluation

The theme for my Digipak was black and white, I chose this particular because during my research of music videos I realised that black and white videos tend to make the quality of a film look more professional and unique in the sense that a small majority of people usually opt to film something that is black and white. I researched a series of black and white videos for example Beyonce’s video to the ‘single ladies’ track was very simple it just consisted of three women dancing to a beat, the whole entire video relied on the dance routine and the tempo of the beat; and in turn it became one of her most iconic videos. Another artist whom I found to resemble similar style to what I was looking for in my own video was Ne yo, he has also done a series of black and white videos that reflected the type of style I was going for, therefore during my research and storyboard editing, I took inspiration from his work.
Black and white videos tend to be much more simple than a video that is in colour, and for that very reason I wanted to film my video in this contrast because it would allow the artist to stand out, it would in a way give the viewer no choice but to focus on the lyrics, the artist and the video.

To make sure my Digipak design stuck to the codes and conventions I looked at some existing products I looked at different types of Digipak until I narrowed it down to the ones that were similar to the ideas I had for my own work. All Digipak have to stick to a certain code that way they are easily recognisable as a DVD Digipak, therefore I had to include so many elements to my own front cover for example the most important conventions where, the age certificate, the price, bar code, the name of the artist and track, and the image of the artist. The ancillary text had to match with the video so I stuck with the idea of a black and white house style. What makes the front cover of my Digipak different from other Digipaks I researched was that; the image of my artist was almost unrecognisable. I wanted to do this because it would be visually exciting and different, it allowed the importance of the track to stand out and it highlighted the fact that he was now a new solo act separate from anything that he had done before; he used to work in a band until they split up so in order for this to be something to recognise I decided to design the front cover the way I did.

The Digipak had to stand out I didn’t want it to look like an amateur work so I did my best to research Digipak from all genres which allowed me to see what where the common features of all Digipaks. The booklet was an important feature for, almost every Digipak tends to include a small booklet that allows the buyer to have more of an insight into the favourite artists, it’s important for people to know how much work these artists put into their work and booklets are a good way to do so. In my booklet I included many key features, for example the list of tracks, who wrote them, who produced them etc; I also included some images in the booklet, because although information is important for the reader it is also important that the reader is visually stimulated; and images are a very good way to engage the reader.

The designing of my Digipak was challenging because there was so many things that I had to do, so to make it easier for me I created a questionnaire that would allow me to find out what it is people liked about music videos and why and from that information I would them know what to included in my Digipak and it would also give me some ideas about the design of my magazine advert. Representation was one of the most important key elements to my work, I wanted to have a positive representation for young people therefore the ideas that I had for the project had to send a positive message to the viewers; young upcoming artist tend to have a lot of half naked women in their videos and this tends to be a common theme amongst the youth, because they believe that is one of the ways they can sell records. I wanted to show my target audience whom where between the ages of 16-20 that they didn’t have to be like that. My Digipak images send a very clear message they show a young man who is driven by ambition therefore I chose to do a lot of close ups for the images from my digipak and for the video. Representation is very important for an artist, especially if the target audience is of a younger generation; so for my digipak i wanted to show an image of a young man dressed different from the stereotype of young men. Young men of the current music industry tend to wear over sized clothing, lots of women surrounding them and they use foul language; believing that it is the way they are supposed to represent themselves. I wanted to make sure I move away from that completely so during the storyboarding of my digipak me and the artist decided that a formal look that suited the pop genre is what we were going to go for, this style shows him in a mature light and it sends a positive message to a younger audience.

As for the back cover of my digipak, I chose to make it slightly different from the front cover, the most important information on the back cover is highlighted in the colour purple, and the background of the cover has just like the front cover, music notes running across the cover. The back ground has many recognisable features, for example the track listing, the image of the artist in a medium close up shot, the bands logo, record label information and many other features. As a whole I am pleased with my digipak because it represents my artist in a way we both discussed, the house theme of black and white was important for my work because I believe that it allows my work to be different from what anyone else would have thought of doing, I picked a genre of music that I knew I hadn’t really had much experience in because in past projects I have done many designs that related more to the hip-pop genre. I knew it would make my work unique to me because it is something that I would be learning, something I had not thought of doing before, I believed the challenge would help me produce something that my artist did not expect; and that is the result I got when I finally showed my artist T-nay all the work I had done.

In conclusion I achieved what I wanted from my digipak, I stuck to the storyboard me and my artist had planned which made the work easier to complete. The code and conventions where important when it came to designing my digipak, if I was to change my something about my digipak I would possibly take more time to design at least three more digipaks front covers that had different styles to them, or one thing I would have considered would be to have more colour in my booklet. Furthermore the digipak did suit my artists’ style and I was pleased by the outcome of the project.

What I did to make my digipak look like how other professional finished digipaks.

*Age certificate.
*Bar code.
*Price.
*The artist’s image and title of the song.
*Track listing.
*Bands logo.
*Record labels information.
* I inserted the digipak designs in a digipak template.