Photoshoot: Choosing the photos

As a group, we all decided together we wanted our artist to be dressed in a dark top which suits our plans for our final digipak album covers. We took around 50 more pictures, but I specifically selected this selection as I could not decide which two pictures to use for my album cover. Another reason why I am finding it more difficult to decide which one to choose is because I am not sure whether I would want her to be looking directly into the camera or to be looking away.

Planning Ancillary products: Photoshoot

Appearance : I wanted Athena to wear something very simple for the photo shoot as i was going to do a lot of editing so bright colours and patterns would make it a harder,   we went with  simple neutral block colours in either black or white.   I have seen a few pop artists wearing casual clothes on their album covers but its not common

 

I thought it would be a good idea if we made the hair slightly different as she had a bun in all the shots in the video,  i thought we should keep the same Look and use minimal make up,  simple and natural would become known as Raven Kings style.

Location : 

I needed to shoot in a similar setting to a studio where i was able to get a white background so it was easy to remove the image from the background in the editing stages.  I was unable to use the studio but  found a white wall with good lighting where i was able to take the photographs 

Here is a selection of some of the photographs taken 

These are the photographs i decided to use 

Album Design Plan

I'm not a very good artist but i tried my best in trhing to make my ideas clear on how i would roughly want my album design to come out. So far this is how i owuld like my designs to come out however it may change a bit later once i think of more better ideas. But so far this is what i have...

FRONT PANEL:

 
BACK PANEL:

INSIDE LEFT PANEL:
 
INSIDE RIGHT PANEL:
 

Planning ancillary products : Advertisement

I decided to advertise Raven Kings album in WE LOVE POP. 

I made this choice because it's a magazine that promotes both big and small pop stars, it  prioritises the pop genre with the name 'WE LOVE POP.  The other option was billboard magazines as it is a well known magazine and brand that promotes a variety of artists,  however i decided this choice probably wouldn't be realistic because Raven King is an upcoming artist so she would be more likely to feature in a smaller magazine as she isn't established in  mainstream  yet.

The style of my advertisement  

I want to advertise Raven Kings album in the style of a magazine advert.  I decided this would be a great choice as it's something that I've seen done by a lot of modern pop artists and I think this would be  more of an appropriate choice than a billboard poster or a tour flyer. This flyer would most likely be accompanied by a small interview with Raven King thats on another page. 

When creating the magazine poster there are some important things i wanted to include  

• Simplicity 
• Informative
• Eye catching
• Synergy
• Representation of the artist style

Down below are examples of some of the flyers and posters in the style I'm trying to create. 

Here is my advertisement plan 

Rough Ancillary Work: Pitch Feeback

After I pitched my original concept for my digipak to my teacher she gave me feedback on how to improve. She enjoyed my idea of an signature image in the artist's name with influences from Ella Eyre and also she liked my colour themes of white, purple and black. Although she was impressed with the amount of though and detail I had put into planning, my teacher explained the problems with my advertisement. I had missed out the artist's name, but also I had put the wrong information at the top. I put the logos of where the album would be sold however they are supposed to be smaller and at the bottom as they are not the focus of the advert. Apart from that they weren't a lot of problems with my ideas and inspirations, but I will definitely use this feedback to improve the quality of my digipak.

Planning for Ancillary Work: Mock up of Advertisement

I took inspiration for what I should include on my advertisement from artists from the pop/ r'n'b genre. Rihanna, Katy Perry, Adele and Delilah feature a smaller version of their album cover in some way on the poster. Delilah however, uses her album cover as the main image on her advert. Her advert also includes reviews from different media outlets such as The Guardian. As well as this, both Adele and Delilah put their record label copyright logos on their poster. The majority of the adverts also include the release date or the words 'out mow', along with the artist's website.

All of this information led me to  creating this rough mock up of my advertisement design. If any this has made me realise what not to do, as after pitching my idea to my teacher I realised that I had left out the artist name, album name on the poster. I also messed up the positioning of the different elements as the digital download information should be smaller and at the bottom of the poster as it is not the most important information. From doing this mock up and doing the pitch I now know exactly what I should do for this part of my digipak. In the long run this has enabled me to plan and produce a good quality digipak later in the project.

Dos and don'ts

Research for Ancillary Work: Mock up of Inside of Album

The inside of my digipak will include:

• A crown on the cd (possibly the artist name
• Pocket for the lyrics book
• The track listing with producer and writers information

Researching Ancillary: Pitch for Ancillary

Researching Ancillary: Font style

Planning ancliiary products : Pitch

Researching Ancillary: Analysis of three digipaks and advertisements

Researching Ancillary: Advertisements

Researching Ancillary: Album Covers

One of the first things I did was look at a few popular pop albums for the inspiration of my own ancillary products. The images range from simple to more graphically enhanced (Pitbull).

Planning for Ancillary Work: Mock up and ideas for Album Cover

I took inspiration from artists similar to the look I wanted for my artist and were from the same or a similar genre. Such as Kelly Rowland, Ella Eyre, Elle Varner and Cher Lloyd our original artist. They all seemed to share similar elements such as a blue tint on the artist's face and/or background. Such as on Kelly Rowland's album 'Here I Am' and Elle Varner's album 'Perfectly Imperfect'. Elle Varner is also showed sideways with her hand on her forehead, this gives me an idea of how I want our artist to pose during the Photoshop for our digipak.

I also took inspiration for font types from Kelly Rowland's album and Cher Lloyd's album 'Sorry I'm Late' where our song choice for our music video came from. 

I also looked at my artist's brand image and found that using a crown as our artist's signature symbol would be a way of incorporating the surname 'King' into our digipak. for this I looked at the artist Ella Eyre who uses a lion wearing a crown in the middle of her name and that is her logo for everything her name is printed on such as posters, album covers, advertisements etc. This helped me think about how I wanted the crown to be presented.

This is the final mock up, however this idea will probably change as the project goes on.

Research for Ancillary Work: Design Activity

In my media lesson we were shown a mock up of a wrong digipak and were asked to recreate a digipak correcting the mistakes. To do this activity I used the two images below as I wanted the create a 3D concept and the girl in the image is seen hiding behind a wall. I also picked a background similar to the wall in the girl's picture so it is easier to blend the two images.

This is the finished concept

Mock-up preparation for Digipak

I researched some singers and mentioned the specific genres which are the same as Cher Lioyds, these singers that I searched have album covers designed perfectly for there genres.
After observing them carefully I personally find Jessie J's one most fitting and appropriate.



Aleena Rahman's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Analyisis Of Three Digipaks

Planning ancillary products: Inside the album

The Left Inside Panel

I got inspiration from past students Ancliliray products on how to design my CD.

I thought i would keep it simple and playful like the examples below.

I want to make Raven Kings CD black and simple. I'm going to include her Name and a small image , on the CD. I thought putting the wink from the image on the front of raven album cover 

would emphasis her cheeky side and show the audience more of her personality.

The Right Inside Panel 

I was inspired by Demi Lovatos album for the inside panels of my album , i thought it was a nice touch that she had another photograph of herself on the inside.

I decided to put a exlclusive image of Raven king inside the album and subtlely over lay the outline of london over her face. I thought this would create come contunity and portray Ravens artistic style. 

(Mock image)

Planning Ancillary products : Dos and don't

Planning ancillary products: Digi pack Ideas

The Genre of my Artist is Pop,  to create a good album cover and promotional package i need to create something thats conventional in the pop music industry, so i thought the best way to do this
would be to look at album covers from modern day pop artists.

The majority of the albums i looked at had full and half body shots, however i prefer to use a close up for album covers, i found this really cool layering effect i would like to incorporate which would explore Ravens artistic style i'd like to have her posing in the larger picture and winking in the smaller picture to show her cheeky personality.

Raven King is British i decided  to emphasis this as its  something that sets her apart,  i decided to use a photograph of London  as the background of the front and back panels, with a filter effect over it. There will be a big photograph of Raven on the front of the album obscuring the background   but as you look at the back panel you'll realise its a picture of London.  

I decided to change the album name to something a little more up beat and which fits the convention of pop.  I still wanted the album to be something personal as it's Ravens first.  I decided i would call it  Hoist the flags  this highlights Raven's journey from  a  British artist starting to make ripples in the international market.

Artist Name Font choices

Album Title
(I've decided to use this font for the album title and general writing on the cd)