Digipak Design Ideas - Artwork

I've been looking at the artwork of many indie genre digipaks and have found that generally, they do not show the artist, but rather use simple artwork and colours to convey their meaning. Therefore, I would like to use the below photo but editing the colours - blue sky on the outside covers, pink on the inside - and editing the photo to give it a more surreal feel, by distorting the image. This is because whilst the sound of the artist is calm - it's also a bit dreamlike and so a realistic looking CD case would not get across all elements of the music, which wouldn't sell the album well.

Hayley Kiyoko's album cover, which combines a portrait of her with surrealist elements

Imagine Dragons album cover, which uses photo manipulation to create a slightly dreamlike image

Magazine Advert Research

I found this advert from the release of Bon Iver's second album. The artist dominates much of the picture and the font is very distinctive and the same as the font on the album, so that audiences can make the connection between the two. There is also a very similar muted colour scheme of green and yellow, as well as when the album is being made available.

This advert for Florence and the Machine also uses the same font and artwork as on the album cover, allowing the audience to make that link, as well as providing important information about the release of the music.

Digipak Design Ideas - Fonts

Looking at fonts, music artists tend to have a specific font that is a part of their branding. Here are a few examples of this:

So I've been looking at different fonts and have decided on a loopy handwriting style to evoke the dreamy feel of the artist's music but have yet to decide on a specific font. Here are some of the fonts I've been looking at, the middle one is my favourite as the top one feels too childish:

Digipak Track List Ideas

When creating my own digipak, I will have to establish the identity of the artist and part of that involves the track list of the album. Most albums typically have between 8 and 12 tracks on them.
I have been using name generator websites to get suggestions for song titles. Here are a few examples of those websites:

I have also been using exercises in class to generate ideas for song titles and bands names. For example, we played a game not dissimilar to Consequences and ended up with the following band name:

Some ideas I have had for the track list are:

1. Hues (the song we set the music video to)
2. Distant
3. Trouble
4. Stone Rhythm
5. Weapons Of Realism
6. Suspicion
7. Slough
8. Madison
9. Sometimes It Just Has To End

Media Showcase This Evening

This afternoon is the media showcase, wherein we will show our finished music video to an audience and get some feedback for our evaluations. Below is the speech we have written for before the music video plays to give the audience some context.

"Hi, we're Mac 3. This is our indie music video set to Wash by Bon Iver. We paid close attention to rural and urban contrasts in order to make the separate narratives of the two main characters clear. We'd like to thank Mr and Mrs Goulding for helping us out on this project and hope you all enjoy!"

Final Music Video

Here is the final music video.

Digipak Track List - Researching Other Artists

I have been researching the digipaks of indie artists in order to get a greater idea of what I should include in mine and what the conventions are.

Firstly, I looked at Bon Iver, as they are the band whose song we have used. Below is the track list from their self titled second album.

A common theme of this appears to be one word titles, as well as locations, perhaps locations that are significant to the artist and relevant to the content of the song. So, I may use a couple of locations on my track list, as well as sticking to mostly one word titles.

I also looked at the track list of The 1975's I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It. 

Again, one word titles are used but many are also in the first person, suggesting the more personal feel that the indie genre carries and so this is something that I will use on my digipak track list.