Digipak - Initial and final versions

After producing my three initial designs, I went on to create the images that would form the prototype of my final digipak - using the designs as reference, I took photographs of the city centre skyline in the daytime and early evening, along with the evening night sky and the moon in my back garden, as I thought those images would best reflect the idea of fate and destiny (the title of the album being 'What If'), as well as the R&B genre. Next, I looked over the photos and selected six that would suit the digipak best, before sorting them on Microsoft Office Word, according to which panel they should go on: either the front, inside left, inside centre, inside right, extra panel and the back. Here is my initial digipak prototype print-out:

From top: Front cover and inside centre images

From top: Inside centre and inside right images

From top: Extra panel and back cover images

Like the music video, the digipak images were shown to the students in my class, who offered constructive criticism regarding its layout, typography and the colour scheme; while many of them liked the shots, the framing and the used of a white font, one comment said that the colours chosen did not link to the music video and another believed that the images needed more detail since they considered them to be dull. These comments lead me to change most of the photos and take a slightly different approach - this included taking photos from other areas of my computer that would best reflect the tone of the music video and album, opening them in photo program Picasa, increasing the brightness if need be, adding text and cropping them accordingly so they would be around the same size as a commercial CD package.

From top: Front cover and inside left images

From top: Inside centre and inside right images

Extra panel image

Back cover image

How the images

would look when put together to create an actual digipak

By replacing some photos and editing others on the digipak, I have provided a link of romance to the music video and album, and I have created variety through replacing some of the photos of the sky with a signpost, a man standing by himself, a couple of trees and a pair of feet. I chose these images as they connect to the lyrics, such as 'I was just walking by, minding my own biz' and 'what if it was real, what if it was fate'; the feet symbolise walking, while they sky and the signpost represent the idea of fate, destiny and the numerous possibilities that life can offer.

The last digipak prototype that I created, which I used as my final one, retains the blue sky as seen on the front and back covers, but with the text decreasing in size in order to conform to the convention of the track listing being in a small typeface. I did this by opening the original photos in Picasa and brightening them with the light tool, before adding bold, white text and selecting the font sizes accordingly: for the track listing, I used font size 12, while for 'Marcus' and the letters 'V' and 'L', it was 22. The rest of the letters in the title, 'Visions of Love', were in a font size of roughly 14 - the reason why I chose to do this was in order to add a visual dynamic to my cover and also distinguish the artist name from the title, thus enabling the audience to do the same.

With regards to the images, I replaced the pair of feet with an arrangement of paper, a pen and an envelope, the man in a hood with a man's face and the two urban area trees with a pair in the countryside. I did this so that I would be able to link the new images to the song and album accurately.

For example, the man's face, which represents my artist, 'Marcus', enables the audience to identify him and develop a distal connection with him, while also conforming to the R&B convention of displaying the artist's face within the package, while the paper-and-pen-arrangement represents the artist trying to connect with his love interest and develop a relationship, which is denoted through the words 'call her' on a post-it note and the track listing being written on the pink paper. I feel that by choosing that colour, I created connotations of romance and love, key themes of the single and album.

My use of the pair of trees in the countryside represents a partnership between the character in the video, just like the initial pair of trees that I used. However, unlike the latter, the former is better framed & lit and features the trees in between a clear blue sky and green grass, highlighting a tranquil countryside setting that links the package to the video, which shares this setting. What makes this new photo different from the original is that I photographed it with a Canon 70D DSLR camera in the RAW format and brightened the resulting image in Digital Photo Professional, before converting it to JPEG in order to make it easier to manage. This was also the case with the photo of 'Marcus' and the paper-and-pen arrangement, which looked clearer and more professional as a result of this procedure.