1)
Here I have 3 drafts of the design for my digipak:
Front
I knew from designing this wooden background that I wanted to incorporate it in to my digipak. I admire the rawness of this material as it is simple, yet it shows one my artist's core values of helping the environment as the wooden planks dennote deforestation aswell as denottoing the beauty of nature. I still felt like an element was missing from this draft.
Back
Considering that the environment is a key concern of my artist, I felt that I should include an element of the city to connote industrialization. However, I felt that this was mismatched with the natural cover, therefore, I decided to incorporate the aspects of the city on the inside of the digipak and have nature on the outside to entice environmentalists as they are included in my target audience.
Inner-layer 1 (left)
Despite having a natural theme on the front and back of my digipak, I wanted to include it on one of the inner layers to contrast with another innerlayer of the city, hence connoting the historical growth of the city and the destruction of nature.
Inner-layer 2 (right/disk)
I admired this design a lot, but I felt that it wasn't expressing my artist's message of environmentalism. Instead, it appears to glamour city life instead of expressing the dangers of pollution, deforestation (etc).
2)
Front
I realised that many Indie digipaks consist of an abstract image, such as Milo Greene's Milo Greene has a face that looks like it has been dissected and sewn back together. I went with a similar idea to add to my wooden background, but I thought it wasn't original enough and appeared too random and over complicated for the simple pro-environmental message I want to convey.
Back
Lots of other digipaks I have analysed follow a natural theme e.g. Coldplay's Parachutes features a globe and Milo Greene's Milo Greene includes a lot of greenery. Using my research, I developed this idea of a tunnel to connote a journey from dark to light, which would highlight the path humanity should take to resolve its current global issues. I decided that this wan't effective enough to express this message and just looked like a pretty picture with no meaning that would not make my audience consider its meaning.
Inner-layer 1 (left)
I thought of this idea of one of my duo members (either my singer or guitarist) lying face down with numerous objects surrounding them,for instance, a guitar, cigarettes, a flower pot and a bottle and using a blue filter over this. I thought the blue filter would connote the sadness of all these issues in the world and help to create sympathy from the audience in order for people to empathize with our dying world. I believed that this idea was effective in creating empathy but it seemed to lack direction as to what the empathy was for as the random objects distracted from the core issue of the environment.
Inner-layer 2 (right/disk)
Again, I created an abstract idea, but I felt that this similarly fails to get my message of helping each other and the environment. I think that the universal focus of this design deviates from my main focus of protecting the environment and it instead seems to go in to a more abstract genre.
3)
Front
This front cover seemed to effectively portray the corruption of humans from the black and white filter on the girl and the use of vibrant green leaves to connote the optimism that growing trees and looking after nature generally can give us for protecting the earth. I think that it works well with the planks of wood in the background as they dennote prison bars, connoting the lack of freedom we are giving wildlife by destroying their natural habitats from deforestation.
Back
Continuing the wooden design on to the back of the digipak is quite effective as it makes the digipak denote a piece of wood, connoting responsibility as it makes nature seem quite scarce and having what appears to be a piece of a tree in your hand also connotes guilt that humans have about ruining the environment. I think this is effective as it will engage environmentalists and raises awareness of global issues that the artist cares about.
Inner-layer 1 (left)
I really admire this concept as the use of a single monochrome style filter effectively signifies the issue of destroying the environment and it connotes the pessimism and chaos that will happen if we continue building over trees as shown in the picture.
Inner-layer 2 (right/disk)
The contrast of this fresh and natural inner layer compared to the artificial and depressing previous inner layer strongly connotes my main theme of renewal throughout both digital and print work. The effect of duplicating one single picture is that it denotes a reflection of the world in a mirror, specifically, the darker copy signifying a pessimistic dimension to create fear for the audience of what the world might look like in the future if we don't look after it. To differ, the natural picture is shown after the darker version to connote realism as it takes the audience back to the present day to signify that we can act now and prevent this from happening.
Final Draft
Here is my final draft idea, inspired by my previous drafts:
Instead of creating a new character as a symbol of the innocence of nature, I decided to use my duo as characters but only included silhouettes of them as I wanted the album to focus on their music to support the band's humble image and the quirkiness of the Indie genre (hence the geometric background connoting the depth and contrasting themes of Indie music.
I decided to use the Inner layer design from draft free as I felt it best suited the direction of the artist's music as they would rather stay with a small, Independent record label to express their environmentalist values through their music and their strife for social change. The black and white reflection of the colourful cityscape hints the consequences of industrialism and effectively communicates the artist's message of people coming together in harmony to look after the world. I decided to add lyrics of to these pictures such as "we're running out of time" on the dark filtered image and "I know we'll do good together" on the coloured image to further this idea of the contrasting binary opposites (Strauss) of the past and future, symbolising the dire need for change in humanity's neglect of the world.
The back of my digipak includes my original idea of having a wooden background, but I have used a black and white filter as it links all the separate components of my campaign like the monochrome colour change filters in my music video to enable that the audience understand the core themes of hope and pessimism in the narrative of my music video. I have also used conventional features of Indie digipaks like a bar code and the label my artist are assigned to as fans of other artists under the same label may be attracted to my artist's work. Song titles are shown at the back of the album so that fans of certain singles can recognise them, hence buying the album to listen to them. I used a dark grey fading to light grey effect on the typography of the song titles as this again represents the contrasting themes used throughout my campaign that are essential to the message of triumphing though hard times and making positive change my band are determined to express.
