Digipak reflection

I think the digipak I created was conventional and does follow codes and conventions of digipaks used within the Industry. The image used on the CD and the back slide makes it conventional to the alternative genre. The image we used was the hollow part of the guitar, in which you can see the strings and the bottom of the guitar’s bodywork. This is conventional to our Artist and to the genre as a guitar is a reoccurring instrument that appears within the song and is often one of the leading instruments that the audience can hear, thus relating the genre to this instrument.

I have a six-slide layout, which is common for Digipaks; I believe this will allow the audience to relate best to our artist ‘Justin Oakley’. Each slide of my Digipak is used for a different purpose. Slide 3 for instance is a welcome note from the artist to the audience. I believe that this will be effective in creating a relationship between the artist and the audience, as Justin will be directly interacting to the audience, giving the audience a sense of having role to play in the success of the artist.

Slide 1, my front cover, includes a picture of Justin. This image was used with the intentions to raise brand awareness for the artist, basically so that audience know whom the artist is as he is a new artist. The Front cover also has a white bar along the top and bottom of the slide to add a picturesque feel to the cover, making the artist look extraordinary. The white bars were also used to show the artist’s name; again like the image this was to raise awareness to the artist, as some of the audience may not know his name. By the audience knowing the artist’s name and what he look likes they are more likely to buy albums and make Justin more successful.

We decided to link the CD imagery with the back cover, as I noticed that some of my slides lack cohesion and didn’t look like they belonged to the same digipak. The use of a guitar was pivotal in my planning for the digipak and because of this I thought that the CD image would be a good opportunity to use it, because as the artist consume the product the CD is the last point of contact before it is inserted into the playing device and I therefore wanted the image to be representative of the artist and instantly placing the audience into the mindset that the artist will be exceptional at playing and instrument, in this case the guitar. The decision to use a guitar is conventional in the sense that our alternative genre has a fixation on showing the artist playing the instrument, thus instruments becoming iconography for the genre. Potentially, if I were to change anything I would change the font used. The reason I say this is because I wouldn’t change the image used, as I believe it links well with the back page of the album cover. The font could be changed to something less industrial that looks as if it could be found on word processing software such as Microsoft office.

The welcome note slide has the background of a guitar, with a low opacity image of Justin in the right corner and the message to the left of the picture. We decided to use the guitar again for the same reason as we did in the back slide and CD slide-to create fluidity between slides for the audience to look through, this is far the ease of the consumer so that they do not think it is a hassle to read it and take in the messages of our slides and hopefully develop a stronger likening for Justin. The image of Justin was again so that the audience can develop a connection to him. The choice of language of our message as well is humble to the fans. We did this so that the artist isn’t perceived to be egotistical, but genuine. The main colour used is orange. This connotes warmth and a feeling of summer. This was used for two reason; one, independent research shows that, 17/21 people more likely to consume music from the alternative genre in the summer and therefore the warmth of the colour can remind the audience of the summer tie when they appreciate the music most.

The back page follows the same thought pattern as the other slides; the guitar was used as an anchor to ground the audience into a familiar background. At the bottom of the slide is the songs list and the barcode, we put these there as this is key information and before buying our product I expect the consumer to skim read the front and back and therefore it is vital for the back slide to be appealing. If I was to change anything about this slide I would change the theme of the page so that it suites the front slide rather than being different as it may weaken the bond between the artist and audience. 

If I were to complete this task again I would change some ideas I used, for instance some of my slides lack cohesion in the sense that they do not follow the same theme as the rest, e.g. my front cover looks contrapunctual to the CD slide and the Back slide as the front cover looks modern where as the other two slides look more traditional. I would also change the locations we used as imagery. The locations we used to acquire our pictures we limited due to weather conditions and lighting and we therefore used a local field because we believe it can fit in with some of the expectations of the audience for the artist, perhaps we could have used a broken building to connote the emotional suffering of the artist which is present in some of his songs. Finally I would perhaps change the images we used as they appear at the moment to be distant to the audience, which could be detrimental to the relationship formed between the two, instead we should utilise this space to really draw the audience into a sense of familiarity with the artist.