Digipak Journey

1. The first two images show The XX's first two album covers, these have inspired me greatly within this journey because they show a very minimalistic style and it is something that I wanted to showcase within my design. The effortlessness that this style shows us is something that is very eye catching as well as being something that not a lot of bands would do. It tells us the name of the band as well as making a statement, which is something I tried to replicate.
2. The next image is of Justice's album, Cross, this design such as the last one is something that I tried to emulate. This is because the simple design and lack of colours was something I wanted to replicate as it really can become a classic. When researching different minimalistic album covers I found websites that showed the top 10 minimalistic designs, this being one of them. This inspired me even more then because I wanted to make something that would have the same prestige.
3. The next two images show moon designs, and an actual picture of the moon. The first image shows a 'full moon in the gemini' and what I liked about this was the colours and the way that this artwork was set out. It looked very original and gave me the idea that I wanted to do an abstract moon design. The next image is of a full moon and just gave me more inspiration of what it was that I was producing.
4. The next four images are of 4 different minimalistic album covers (Prince - The Black Album, Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See, Arctic Monkeys - AM, Jamie XX - We're New Here) all of these albums have a quality that I wanted to get across in my design. It was important for me to find designs like this so I knew that they worked in conjunction with the ideas I already had in my head. I wanted to know that these designs were common in this field, and it seems like they were so that helped in producing my design.
5. The grey panel at the side of the page is to show the main colour scheme that I wanted to use, the use of this fairly dull colour is to make the whole digipak look more sophisticated and slick. It was important to me to get a interesting feel and look to my digipak and I didn't want to make it too flashy considering I was planning on using textures within the design also. I wanted to make sure that the textured effect did the talking.
6. The next three pictures on the second row show my main inspiration which is Arcade Fire, because we are doing this band's song it meant that taking inspiration from their digipaks and general looks as well was very crucial to the development of my work. Here I have a picture of the front cover of their most recent album, Reflektor, as well as a poster from that tour. I have also found a screen shot from the video of the first single off of that album, and I like the use of the mirrored sphere in the background of the shot. This is something that I thought could be relevant to the band and therefore connect to my own design.
7. The next picture shows a close up of a rock, even though this is a fairly odd thing to use as inspiration, I have found that looking at pictures such as this has given me lots of ideas in how I want to present the 'moon' theme. The colours as well is something that inspired me and made me realise that I wanted to keep going with the colour scheme that I originally had in mind.
8. Next, is my first digipak design. I was quite proud of this design as I felt as though it represented the genre of music I was producing as well as the band I was also representing. Having a design that fits with the rest of the work and works well on its own or with seeing the video is crucial. This is because it has to look realistic and believable as a digipak and as a first effort, I believe this was achieved.
9. The next image also shows a textured effect that I was curious to try. As I have previously stated, I am interested in finding images such as this because I allows me to see exactly what I want to do and how that can be achieved. The textured effect was very important to me so finding this and many other effects allowed me to be more creative.
10. The next image shows Digitalism's album I Love You Dude, This also was an inspirational digipak cover because of the central element of the digitalised love heart which I used as inspiration for my own central image. That is essentially what I used, also the plain background was something I wanted to emulate.
11. The next images include the fonts and colours that I was intrigued to use on the spine and the back cover of the digipak, I had to create a lot of options of what I wanted to produce because it gives me more of an idea then to how I wanted to go about the final design. As I had criticism from my teacher's in regards to the font I used and the darkness of the colours, it meant that this was of prime importance to me.
12. The next two albums shown also have elements that are showing dramatic geometric designs that are eye catching to the viewer. They were designs that I was very inspired by and also made me realise that these types of designs are traditionally seen throughout the industry and it wouldn't be uncommon if I did something similar.
13. The next design is from a Pet Shop Boys album, this was something that very much helped within the process of my design making. The use of the central image was something that I was trying to find to make sure that it was relevant to what I wanted to produce, Even though The Pet Shop Boys are not within the same genre of my chosen band, their design was still beneficial for me to see.
14. The next two images are painting (Black Circle (1913) oil on canvas. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. By Kasimir Malevich. and Primary Light Group: Red, Green, Blue 1964-65. Jo Baer) they inspired also because of their use of central simple images which is obviously something that I definitely was intending to stick to.
15. This is my final design, the only real difference is the colour has been lightened slightly.
16. The next three final images are minimalistic film posters which I took inspiration from throughout because of their simple design and ability to look more busy than they are which is a style and vibe that I wanted to emulate throughout my design.