Initial Ideas for Digipak

Normally the artist is the main focus in a digipak, and seeing as I will be the one staring in my video, I will also be in my digipak. I think simple mid shots can be effective in a digipak, most of the digipaks I have seen have long shots or mid shots. However I have seen others with one large image folded onto seperate pages. 'Rhianna' did a digipak her album 'Loud'.
Marina and the Diamonds (my artist) hasn't got a digipak for any of her albums so this leaves me with a blank canvas and free to think of my own ideas. I think I am going to create a digipak similar to the one on the left. I will only need 1 image to do the internal part of the digipak and another for the external.







Most of Marina and the Diamonds covers seem to be one of 2 types, one is like this:

 

And the other is like this:

 
Overall I think these 2 groups are very different to eachother. The 1st group of images are newer than the other and look extremly similar, almost as if they have been shot on the same day. The font used on both the images is very similar. The facial expression is very similar and it looks as if they have been edited in the same way. I don't really know why these 2 images have been produced very similarly, it may simply come down to the lack of money. The main differenec in the first 2 images is the fact one is a album and the other is a single. I haven't seen any other artist producing their album/single covers in a way that is so similar to eachother.
The second group of images are again very similar. Alike, the first group, the use of font is the same and the image of the artist looks as if it has been taken from the same photoshoot. In contrast ot the first group,the image of the artist is quite different and the use of colours has a definate contrast.
After studying these album/single covers I think I should create something that is different to these and try to present the message of the music video in my digipak. I need 2 images and I don't want these images to be really similar like the current covers here. I plan to do 2 seperate photoshoots, with costume changes. I want to use www.dafont.com to use a font that is edgy and uncommon. I think it would be easy to choose a current font from a word processer, but I think it could make my digipak look amature and uninteresting. I want my digipak to carry a lot of representations, for example I think I should use colours like red, white and blue, to connote Americanisation, but also British heretige.

Digipak Templates and Designs

     
This is a 6 panelled digipak. This is the design I am most likely to use because it has quite a lot of panels. This means that I will need 6 different photos for each individual panel. On this template the CD plate is in the middle, but this can be moved around and will only affect the way the digipak folds. I have also thought about taking a photo that could be spread across 3 internal panels and took this idea from the Rhianna digipak above. This design does widen my potential, by this I mean I can choose to use sets of large photos, one per panel or a mixture. I will only need to place one CD plate in the digipak so I need to choose an image that would be appropriate to place under the CD plate as the image can be slightly magnified or unclear. This means I will need a variety of images to try, because if I only took one image and it didn't work, it could mess up the rest of the digipak. I think the images need to be related in someway, for example all black and white. I think if lots of different images are used (like very different locations), it can look unproffesional and look as if no effort was made.

Another 2 Panel Design

  This is another design for a digipak. This has one more panel than the first design and this means it will require 2 more images to fill them. It also has 2 CD panels so would more likely to be used prehaps for a  special addiction album, such as greatest hits or all the artosts songs; or a DVD, for example a blu-ray and DVD edition or a 2 part DVD. I think this layout is less likely to be used for a CD due to the 2 CD panels. After doing some research on the internet I haven't be able to find any digipaks with 2 CD panels, so I think this is likely to be a less convensional method.