Research of Layout and Fonts for Digipak and Advert

Layout:

The layout for these four digipak covers so exactly what I would like to be achieving within my own digipak. The minimalistic style which can clearly be seen throughout these designs is something I have been inspired by for along time. The effortlessness that is exuded from each of these designs and the way they seem to be more developed and 'busy' than they actually are is a design feature that I am willing to try and portray within my own design because having a design like this can really stand out in a music shop, which is my reasoning for trying to replicate this in the first place. In particular, The XX and Justice are the album covers that I am taking the most inspiration from because they only have one singular image in the middle of the cover. Even though the Pink Floyd and Digitalism album covers also have this, they have other features on them that doesn't make them just set images within the very middle of the cover. The colour schemes as well throughout each of these covers is very simple, again this is something that I want to take through into my own work because having too many colour could make the design look overly busy and ruining the look and feel that is being given off from these simple designs. For my own design, I am thinking that I will include the image of two circles in the middle of the cover, I would feel as though this is slightly different to anything I have seen before (however I am certainly not being original with my ideas, as I have taken massive inspiration from the designs above) and would create the impact that I wanted to create. Also I feel as though this is something that reflects the band I am portraying very well, and will compliment the style that we have given them.

Font:

With all of these designs, even though I am not going to be producing a digipak cover such as this, I am taking major inspiration from the font styles used throughout and how they have been integrated into the design to give an air of effortlessness. The Two Door Cinema Club design is one that I find the most inspirational to me because I love the quirkiness of the font and how it has been layed out on the design to give the most impact to the audience. Having a font such as this on my design, even though here it has been used on a more Indie/Pop record, it would still work on my Indie/Alternative version because of the plans that I have got in mind so far. The two Arcade Fire examples are shown here because they are the band that we are inspired by the most, as we are using their song in our music video, so to see how they have achieved their own digipak design is something that I find very interesting because I want to take as much inspiration from them as I can; as their style and quirks is what we want our band to be portrayed as, so seeing these designs and how they have been produced (even if I use them or not) is still something that I want to capture the essence of in many ways. The Vampire Weekend one on the other hand uses a very simple yet effective font; it creates an impact without being too busy or loud. It gets across the right amount of style and sophistication and is therefore something else that I would like to bring into my design somehow. 

Sophie CD covers inspiration

Study of a Director

These are all videos directed by David Wilson, possibly one of our main inspirations for our video. He manages to create such whimsical charm and quirkiness throughout all of the videos he has produced that it would be hard for us to look past this. One of the main reasons why we are choosing him for our inspiration is because he directed one of the more recent videos for Arcade Fire, and because they are our chosen inspirational band then we wanted to see what kind of things they were putting out to their audience. Wilson is a English music video director and animator and studied Illustration at Brighton University. His keen eye for detail and mise en scene is something that we as a group need to replicate because being the perfectionists that we are then using another perfectionist as inspiration is possibly the best way to go. All of his videos include something new, and have a completely different look and even though we are not producing a lot of videos all at once; to have this man in mind and what we can create then it is a good mindset to have to be thinking that we are making his next video.

Video Inspiration: Camera Shots and Dance

We really like the style of this video, as well as the dance. It is something that we are going to try and create, possibly using the effect of the repeated movements as we feel as though this might fit into our video also.

We want to do a close up of the male dancer's face (Cam) at the beginning of the video and this is a good example of this, because we want to try and get the emotion into Cam as well, and because this is black and white it fits our theme and video ideas well.

We really like the blurring effect that is done on this video, without the bugs of course, and doing this technique is something that will definitely be able to fit into our video and something that we are going to attempt on our filming day.

The use of black and white in this video is the main thing that we are taking from it, the setting and the dance also is something that we may take from it however this is still undecided and we will have to see on the day whether this is a good idea or not.

Dance inspiration

Revised Video Ideas

After more discussion of what our video is going to contain we have talked more about what the characters are representing and the stories they are telling to the audience. This is really important because we need to know the story we are telling before we tell it so that we can give it everything that it deserves. For example, we have decided because the male dancer/singer has the power over the female dancer (his kind of love interest) it means that she hasn't found out about the conflict that the singer is facing and she doesn't know about the other woman that he is thinking about. So because of this, we thought it would be a good idea to have a moment in the video when the female dancer finds out about this mistrust and disloyalty. When this happens the dance will change completely and become incredibly violent and angry, also just before this happens there will be a flash of extreme light to show that the mood has changed and the lovers who you think at the beginning of the video are really in love, turn out not to be.
Getting a proper story line in place is incredibly important to the integrity of the video because it means that it won't be hollow or anything that doesn't represent the meaning of the song. Having a story line in place, especially one that is heavily influenced by what the song is saying and the message behind it.
Also after this big flash of light, we were thinking of including a disco ball. Not to have actually in the shot but to create an extra texture to the video. This is obviously still just a thought that might not even make it into the video but it is important to think of different ways of doing things. This idea was mainly inspired by our chosen inspirational band, Arcade Fire, because on their most recent album they sing about 'reflektors' and include a lot of disco ball lighting in their recent videos and also in their live shows. This would just be something that is in homage to them.
Of course, these are all passing ideas so far. We have yet to plan the dance which will be done this week and hopefully once that has been established and recognised then we will be able to move forward with the rest of the video.

Moodboard of band inspiration

Band inspiration moodboad