Digipak Artwork

I started looking at existing artwork that my group could use as inspiration and influence for our own digipak design.

Escape The Fate's album 'Dying is Your Latest Fashion' has simple yet really effective cover art. A really high quality photograph of our video's actor could provide a striking digipak cover. The Bronx also feature the bottom half of a face on their album artwork, but with some graphics depicting the band name and album title 'The Bronx'. We could employ the use of graphics in our own cover art as we are all capable in Adobe Photoshop.

Faithless' album 'Sunday 8pm' is also a photograph. A location shot from our video, such as Leake Street graffiti tunnel could be used as digipak artwork. This artwork is also clever as it features the album title 'Sunday 8pm' within the photograph, which may not be noticable at first glance. The Used's latest album 'Artwork' features a somewhat controversial cover image. I like the darkness and grittyness of the photo, and how it is not afraid to shock. Although we don't feature drugs in our video, something equally controversial could provide a unqiue cover shot.

Something simple like From First To Last's album 'Heroine' could work, but as we are a creative group I think we'd like to include more than just text in our design.

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Brainstorming with my group, we found this artwork:Deftones' Album 'Saturday Night Wrist' features interesting artwork. We really liked the use of overlaying images and colours. It creates a disorientating and chaotic design. There are also sexual connotations in the photo of the woman, and this could provide some controversy.

Plan B, one of the artists featuring on our chosen track, has also realeased his own albums. The first, 'Who Needs Actions When You Got Words' features a room on the cover, and the artist, Ben Drew. The brick walls connote a grimey and urban environment, something which reflects the artists style and music. The blood on the hand on the front of his second release 'Paint It Blacker' connotes violence. These themes could influence our own cover art, providing a unique and attention-grabbing design for our digipak.

The artwork on the left is for a band called The Blackout, for their debut EP 'The Blackout! The Blackout! The Blackout!'. The dark lighting, colour scheme and cityscape are things we liked about this cover. The image on the right is of Aiden's latest album 'Knives'. We really liked the emotion conveyed through the dark, grainy photograph and the angle at which it is taken. Anger is an emotion present in our video, as well as regret, sadness, frustration and despair; any of these emotions could be portrayed effectively through a photograph.These album covers by Scary Kids Scaring Kids are influential to us, firstly because of the blood and pain shown on the left image, something we plan to feature in our video, and secondly because of the cityscape in the right image. Our video will be shot in London, avoiding cliched shots of landmarks such as Big Ben, but will probably feature a cityscape view from somewhere such as Parliament Hill in Hampstead which would provide a lesser known view of the City.Pink Floyd's album 'Animals' features a high contrast shot of Battersea Power Station in Southwest London. We want to use this a location when shooting our video. However, using it as album artwork may look too similar. Furthermore, I think a more stylistic and unique photograph would be more suited to the digipak cover; something which conveys my groups creative potential. Jamie T's album Panic Prevention features a very untidy room on the cover, which links to the bedroom we have in mind for our video. The mess connotes our actors distorted and frustrated state of mind.

Bloc Party's albums always feature interesting artwork. The left image from the album 'Intimacy' links to the initmate shots we have planned for our video, and also provides sexual connotations for a controversial edge. The artwork for 'A Weekend in the City' also links to our cityscape ideas. Also, we plan to shoot parts of the video at night, so a photograph shot at night, possibly featuring city or car lights could link perfectly with our video.

I have noticed that all the fonts featured on these album covers are simple and subtle. In some cases, such on as Bloc Party's albums, the sam font is used, to help promote them as a recognisable brand. The use of simple fonts means the artist name and album name is easily read and remembered.