Construction Post 5: Digipak post-production

The next of our three ancillary tasks is the digipak. The digipak was four-panelled, with two inside panels and two outside panels (made up of the front and back cover) - and was created using Adobe Photoshop. I think that our album was completed successfully overall, and that having tweaked our ideas slightly based on feedback, we have created a high-quality product.

Editing part of the digipak

Once again, having used Photoshop in previous projects, it was no issue to navigate around; and though Phoebe was the main group member assigned to work on the digipak, I was able to contribute to editing via Photoshop in places, as well as giving my ideas and input.

Process:

Our template when  editing our digipak via Photoshop.

During production of our album cover, we kept to strict dimensions (285mm x 125.5mm) and worked around a template:

The green area was for our main images and photos.
The blue outline was for text (only) to overlap into.
The red outline was the 'bleed line', and anything in this area would be cut off when the digipak was printed - so no important images or text were allowed to spill over into the red space.

Below I have included my breakdown of the main tools which we used:

Brightness/Contrast & Levels: Allowed us to alter how light or dark an image was, and how extreme the contrast between its highlights and shadows was. We could use this to adjust our focal image (or any other promo shot) if we thought it appeared pale. Similarly to Premiere Pro, we were also able to use levels to adjust an image's colour and the intensity of some shades.

 

We could made numerous visual adjustments to an image: especially using levels & brightness/contrast

Layer Style ( > gradient/colour overlay, drop shadow, etc.): Enabled us to make a number of additions and adjustments to an image in a particular layer. Proved particularly useful when editing the inside panels, as we applied a purple & green gradient overlay to a glitter background (which continued a visual motif from the front cover for synergy), and a drop shadow to the GiGi logo on the front cover, to enable it to better stand out against the background.

We could access 'layer
style' using the layer
tab. From there, we were
able to apply a number
of effects.

Refine edge had a number of scrollbars
and settings to edit the edge of an image.

Refine Edge: Proved to perhaps be the most useful feature when editing. Once we had selected (lassoed) around GiGi from a promo shot, we were able to hit 'refine edge' on the toolbar at the top of the page. From there, we were able to adjust the smoothness of the outline, shift its edge to crop or add to the lassoed image and also select to add a "new layer with layer mask" - useful, as this kept the original image in case we needed to restart refining its edge. This happened often, as when I used the magnetic lasso tool, it often attached to an unwanted part of the image, meaning I had to restart.

Though magnetic lasso was a good tool to use to cut around
part of an object, it occasionally proved problematic if it
attached to another part of the image.

Audience Feedback:

Similarly to the music video task, Georgina collected feedback (again from Biri, an example of a member of our core target audience). The opinions expressed were:

Positives:
-Glitter would appeal well to the young teenage segment of our audience,
-The consistent branding [synergy] of the GiGi logo
-The digipak looked realistic, thanks to conventional institutional information

Negatives/Improvements:
-The shade of purple was different to that of the website
-Multi-coloured font didn't work or match the character of GiGi (thus we changed this to different shades of purple instead)

Some further album feedback which we  received: (left) secondary audience feedback    (right) teacher feedback

We also received feedback from a general audience of music fans (tertiary audience feedback) who noted:

Changes to our track name colours:
an example of the feedback
we implemented

-Eye-catching purple colour theme. Noticed this continues across all three products
-Liked the shot variation between MCU and LS on our outside digipak panels
-Liked the shades of purple for the track listing
-Professional feel due to the institutional information, as it is a convention.
-Youthful look of the inside panel picture would appeal to the core target audience of female teenage and young adult fans of the pop genre.
-Nice continuation of the glitter theme; noticed Suffragette colours



Our digipak:

In hindsight, I would say it required more time than first thought to plan, construct and complete our digipak. This was mainly down to:
-retaking promo shots as original digipak shots didn't work
-rethinking and completely changing our original idea for the inside cover
-taking longer than expected to decide on the images we would use

The original album flat plan

Having booked another time-consuming shooting session, taken on board audience feedback (of no glitter on the face), re-shot our images and having taken completely different photos to what we originally planned for our inside cover, we altered this task a great deal.

Despite not being specifically delegated to get involved in the post-production of the digipak, I am glad that I not only added my input, ideas and feedback to Phoebe as she was editing, but also did in fact help with editing on Photoshop, as I enjoy using the programme and feel that many of my practical skills lie in using it in particular to create and edit products - albeit mainly when snagging our final album cover:

(above) Our pre-snagged digipak.

(above) Our digipak after snagging, with a distribution company (& information) 

and less of a white background outline around Georgina

The main changes between our pre-snagged image and our final digipak which I was responsible for were using the burn tool to attempt to get rid of part of the white background around GiGi on both the outside and inside panels, and advising Phoebe to add a distribution company (we chose RCA, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment) as we found out it was conventional for indie labels like ours to use external distribution companies - which are often subsidiaries of the 'Big Three' - especially for pop artists.

Before our final snags and with us having decided that our original idea of GiGi running in a circle (to reflect female entrapment and lack of progress) hadn't worked at all, it was my idea to replace this with an image of GiGi supposedly signing her name across the album, as this would be a more personal image addressing the audience, and seemed to fit better aesthetically.


Final Product:

I am extremely pleased with the final result of our album. I feel particularly pleased that we have been able to incorporate a lot of synergistic features across not just the four digipak panels, but also between the album and our other promotion methods, such as our website, social media pages and video.
For instance:
-The 'GiGi' and 'Glass Ceiling Records' logos have remained the same, and have kept the same typefaces across all promotion platforms.
-A gradient theme has continued across a number of platforms, seen as a gradient in the logo, on the website & its merchandise, and social media pages.
-The visual motif of glitter continues from the front cover to the inside panels of the digipak.
-GiGi's main colour of purple is easily identifiable, and this has been seen across all of our ancillary tasks.
-The colour scheme of purple, white and green on the digipak's inside panels reflect those of the Suffragette movement, which in itself is a nod to GiGi's personal beliefs, and the underlying message of female empowerment in our music video for 'Sit, Still, Look Pretty'.

Below are our final digipak panels:

Overall, as I have mentioned, I am very happy with our final digipak. I believe that, once more, having incorporated a good amount of industry research, conventions and audience feedback (as well as, of course, our creative thinking and ideas) into our product, we have created a professional-looking product which could fulfil its purposes of clarifying the artist, signifying its genre and, overall, standing out to attract potential buyers. Meanwhile, I am personally happy to have been able to input creative and practical ideas, whilst briefly consolidating my Photoshop expertise.