Group feedback of album artwork designs

 In this blog post we are shared our draft designs of the digipak for our band album artwork. We agreed on the band name as 'The Michelles' and the album name as 'Riot', all the digipak degins include similar colours, fonts and themes relating to our music video which these album artwork pictiures were taken from. 

Here is Bashy's album artwork design:

Bashy's digipak design incorporates images taken from the shoot day of our music video. The lead singer is shown as the representative of this band as they band name is top left of the design, with the album name smaller on the bottom left. I really like the CD design and would include this in my digipak final design. The pink, black and white colours on the images are similar to the colours of the font. The font matches the grafiti in the photo and reinforces the rebellious, girl rock style.

Here is Tegan's album artwork:

The hand drawn graffic detail on Tegan's design really stands out. The symbols on the front cover are similar to the graffitied signs on our photos from the shoot. The band name font is written like dripping graffiti which I will use in our final draft of the digipak. The imagery used is taken from the shoot day. The black, white and pink colour and font scheme is all similar to our aesthetic of this girl band. I also like the hand drawn look on the back cover of the track list. However it needs to include the legal information

Here is Adrianna's digipak design

This album includes all the barcodes, legal information, record label tag and parental advisory which is necessary to our digipak design. The front cover uses different models to our actual band, but the background is taken from our shot day. I particularly like the main focus of graffiti and matching the font to this rebellious grafiti style. 

Making of the digipak part 1

 To contribute to the building of our group's campaign, I took the roll in making the digipak design for our band. In this post I collect a range of ideas, themes, colour schemes, fonts and symbolism to relate to our music video of our girl pop rock genre band. This mood board of styles and imagery will help me to meet the audiences expectations of the digipak so that it indicates immediately the genre, target audience and star image. 

In this mood board I created on Google Slides, I followed similar colour schemes of dark, hot pink and black and white with the font colours and grafiti which is inspired from our pre production planning of the star image. The font will be replicated from the graffiti on the set of our music video, to do this I will use graffiti style writing font on the design of the name of the album/band name as well as incorporating girl power related symbolism to portray a fun feel to the digipak.

Social media tracking

 Here is two different bands and how they use their social media platforms prior to their album release and the activity on their platform. 

First I created a google slides following Avril Leavings activity on her Instagram account before and after her tour of Head Above Water. 

Digipak research into similar genre

 Digipaks are used to help construct the star image of the band/artist, it includes similar themes, styles and colours to the music video. 

For my band's album artwork, it must include either the whole band or the lead singer, or whoever member from the band to represent their image. 

Front: 

name of band (What your selling) 

album name

Parental advisory sticker

Back: 

Legal info

barcode 

number os track list

I have researched into similar album artwork of bands which convey a similar genre to our campaign. 

No Doubt is a pop/punk rock band, their album covers includes the lead female singer representing the band on the front cover. The bold font of the band is centre focus while the album name is smaller further down. While the back is more artistic and doesn't really focus on the whole band. Their album argues a more artistic style and obscure photos.

The bangles is a female pop/rock band, their album cover presents the whole band, the colour schemes of black and pink are similar to our campaign. Their band name is also the name of their album 'The best of the'. It is a simple design however clearly shows the band members, their style and track list on the back. The font is playful and looks as if it has been hand written on, this creates a rebellious effect.

Here is some of a band called 'The Donnas' album covers and a back cover. Their clearly a pop rock band indicated by the instruments which we see them holding in center focus. All the albums show them photographed in, along with some artistic aspects with d to portray a fun rock style. Their band name is in the middle top in all of their albums, with the name of the album written smaller below. On the back cover we see the track list along with another image of the whole band which indicates the main focus. 

Finally, this female rock band called 'Vixen' shows the front cover as a motorbike photographed with a female's heal, the contrast of the manly motorbike and high heel suggests a rock theme. The back cover shows the band altogether with the song list.

In conclusion from researching into similar digipaks related to our genre of campaign They all have imagery of the whole band or the lead singer to represent the bands image and also hints of artistic styles in common. This helps me identify what I will need to include in my digipak design for my band in order to make it clear what genre, style and gender the band is.

Social media campaign

Initially before the internet, artist/bands were marketed through traditional media uses such as radio, tv, posters, newspapers and film. However now the easiest and cheapest way to promote products and artists is through social media platforms, including Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and more. The benefits to using social media means that you can target a specific audience which is most suitable to your product/text. Social media platforms make it interactive and shareable to be shared successfully, and most importantly social media is spreadable. 

Campaigns for bands/artists use social media to create their style, aesthetic, to match their genre of music in order to create their star image. This helps target a specific audience to sell the genre and image to. Social media can be used to sell the product eg an album release, live shows and merchandise of the artist. This results in constructing a artist for the audience to consume. 

In order for the social media accounts if the band/artist to be effective, it must engage, entertain the consumers, not just to sell. These accounts are a formula to disguised market products to the audience while the artist interacts with the audience through Instagram by giving an insight into their lives and lifestyles. usually artists social media accounts become very active before an album release and the presence is high before a album drop, tour or show. 

It is very important that our social media platforms for our band campaign reflect the genre and target audience, the content must contain relevant colours, outfits, styles and aesthetics which are similar to the bands image, this will help us construct the bands star image. Our band will have Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter accounts which will contain related styles, aesthetics and similar bands which they can react with on their platforms. However certain social media platforms are not suited to certain genres, for example TikTok is known as a family friendly, pop style platform where you would most likely discover pop artist promoting their music to young kids on, so TikTok might not be suitable for our bands image.

Test shoot

My group and i organised through Whatsapp to meet up with our cast and we booked the Armadillo practice room to rehearse the song with the whole cast. We asked them to wear appropriate clothing to our aesthetic for the campaign and to bring along their instruments. I organised getting a spare guitar for Connie our guitarist before we began filming. 

We played the song through my phone while Bashy filmed the performance (On his iPhone x) and we changed the positioning of the cast for different shots in order to replicate how we plan on in our final shoot. 

I was in charge for editing this practice test shoot, I downloaded the videos and imported onto iMovie on my phone. I cut and arranged the videos in the right order so that they flow correctly and finally added music over the top. 

I think this test shoot was a successful way of grasping and idea of how our music video will look in terms of band positioning and camera angles, shots and durations. it also gave our cast a chance to learn the song and gain chemistry as they performed as a band, this also helped us see how they all work and look altogether. 

I uploaded this onto YouTube:

Shot List

 Here is our shot list which demonstrates all the shots to take in which set and what action will be taking place at this moment. This is to keep us organised on the day and to make sure we take enough footage for our music video.