Digipak draft 1

Just playing around with photoshop software, general dark mood communicated through images. By no means the finished piece, just fishing for ideas and criticisms, which are generally positive.  Template seems to be of a poor quality - will need to get another to use for future drafts. Personally, I am pleased with my first effort - I am wondering if it is rather bland at this point. Something needs to go on the top left panel, of course.

The bottom right panel is the Digipak front cover, the bottom left panel is the outside rear cover of the digipak, the top right panel is the inside CD holding area, and the panel on the left to that is the inside left cover.

Some of the key themes featuring in the music video, song and lyrics were of isolation, loneliness and escape came through on the front cover, particularly through the use of shadow and greyscaling the image using Adobe Photoshop. The text "No I.DEA" was done in a scribbly type font, giving the character in the image a lack of status - and of course, appearing isolated and different.

The artist George Barnett is not very well known at all so his name isn't of high importance - hence why I put it in an uninteresting font and smaller size to the rest of the text. However, the simplicity of the artist text is highly visable - without being overpowering - as it is a white text against a black background. It also doesn't distract from the overall "blank" feel of the cover - while the dark, intense stare of the character keeps the audience/buyers interest and prevents the cover from becoming boring.

For the back cover panel image I did the same thing as on the front panel image - experimenting with Shadowing and highlighting. This image is at the opposite scale to the other image in terms of shadow/highlighting. Simplicity is kept through the use of the same image, but altered slightly to remain interesting, intense and keep the key themes of isolation etc. The text "no escape" again brings in some of the key themes and links front and back covers in terms of text style.

The red text on the bottom left panel is subtle, yet easily visable. Red works well as it keeps an intense look without being too bold and distracting from the image - the font, "Segoe Script", helps here too. Hence why I also used it for the CD spine text and "George Barnett" text. Will need to add items to the back panel at some point; barcode, record company label etc.

I am unsure of what to do with the top left panel, but I think the lone stick figure on the top right panel works very well. Again, in terms of keeping the key themes in place and simplicity -the figure being under the CD highlights these themes, remaining also within the Indie/rock/alternative genre the artists falls under.