Mock Ups

As I do Photography, I already have a lot of experience within Photoshop CS6 and other photographic programmes. I feel as thought I have a lot of skills and are able to use these when making my own product but also I will be able to develop them throughout this process. By already being experienced in Photoshop CS6, I am familiar with a lot of the tools on their and I think that this could benefit me when making my own digipak. Before I do start on my actual product, I have decided to do some mock ups on some existing photos that I have. I am going to use some photos from my Photography work and experiment with editing.

Album Covers:





I also thought I would make a digipak with the template from the Wyke moodle by using existing images from an existing indie artist. I chose to use 'The 1975' as my inspiration as I feel as though they are quite black and white based when it comes to how they portray their album. Therefore, because my digipak is going to be focused on the black and white colour scheme, I thought I would use them to create a mock up. By creating this mock up, I have been able to experiment with different tools in Photoshop and also, I can see how my final product should look when it is put together on the template. I used some existing photos from Google but I altered the images and changed their colour to black and white. This is what I created on Photoshop:

Doing this mock up helped me in terms of how the layout should be when it comes to making my own. Obviously this doesn't look that professional but when it comes to making my own I will have enough research behind me that I know exactly what I need for it to look like an existing product. Below is evidence of the specific tools I used, how I used them and why:

Overall, I feel as though doing these mock ups have benefited me greatly in terms of being able to use Photoshop confidently, even though I knew most things anyway, I just feel that this has made me feel even more confident and I will be a lot quicker when it comes to editing my digipak. One thing that I did struggle with was putting the images behind the CD holder as this was quite difficult at first. Luckily my friend, who does Computing and has used Photoshop a lot in his work, helped me out and showed me what to do. By doing this, I have learnt myself how to do it so when I come to put my products onto the template, I will know how to do this without any difficulty.

Choosing my tracklist for the album

For my album, I obviously need a track list to make it a complete digipak. At first I wasn't sure what to do about creating a track list because I was initially going to make my own songs up but I thought if I did, the song names may not look professional. Therefore, I have decided to look at some existing albums from artists in the indie-pop genre to get some ideas and I will mix up all the songs from the albums I look at and this will form my track list for my own album.

(There is a Goanimate, please allow it to load if it doesn't straight away)

These are the artists I looked at in order to create my own track list. I searched their albums and then hovered over the title of the song which I am going to use for my own product.

At first I looked at Bastille. I looked at the album 'Bad Blood'. I chose the song title 'Oblivion' and because I liked the song titles so much I even chose another one called 'These Streets'. I don't know for definite if I will use these but I do think they are good.

I then looked at FKA Twigs as I know she is quite alternative and indie so her song titles would be good. I looked through the song titles and picked the one out that I liked the most and this was 'Give Up'. I feel as though it kind of fits in with the song I chose for my video which is 'Hold On'. I feel this would be a good add to my track list.

I then looked at Gotye. I didn't think I was going to be really interested in his album and his song titles but when I looked I was quite surprised at the ones I liked. After doing some debating, I came to the choice of the song title 'Making Mirrors'. I don't really know why I chose this one but it stood out to me and I thought it would look good on my own track list.

I then looked at Lykke Li. Lykke Li is an artist I know of and like so I knew I would find something off her album that I would like. I looked at one of her new albums and one of her old ones. From her new album, I picked out the song title 'Tonight' and from her old album I picked out the song 'Get Some'. I feel like these fit into the theme of short titled songs that are recurring on my track list. This is something I want as I don't really like long song titles.

I then looked at M83. M83 is a band I like and I knew I would find something on their album which appealed to me. I have this album on my phone so I do know their songs quite well and the song titled 'Wait'. Again, I really like this one and I think it fits in with the theme of short titled songs.

After this, I looked at Marina and the Diamonds and again, she is another artist who I know of very well. I chose the song titled 'Savages' because something about the song title intrigues me and it was something I wanted on my album. Again, it fits in with the theme of short titled song titles.

I then looked at SIA. I know she has quite unique song titles so I knew she would be a good person to look at. I chose the song title 'Cellophane' as this stands out to me for some reason and I wanted to add it onto my own track list.

 I then looked at St. Vincent. I have heard of her but never really listened to her before so I wasn't really familiar with the songs. Despite this, I chose the song title 'Digital Witness' as it stood out to me while looking at her album. I am not too sure if I will use this song title yet but it is still there to be chosen.







Finally, I looked at the artist 'SBTRKT' who is the artist of the song for my video 'Hold On'. The reason I decided to look at them is because obviously I am using one of their songs already so I thought it would be good to see if they had any other song titles which would appeal to me. I looked at one of their old albums and then their newest album.  From their old album I picked the      song title 'Never Never' and from      the new album I picked 'Everybody  Knows'. These again fit into the short titled song titles and I think these will look good on the track list I have created as a whole. Possibly as bonus tracks, I am not too sure yet.




So after looking at these, I have decided on the song titles I want on my track list. Obviously, most albums don't have loads of songs so I am going to keep it to around 10/11/12 songs on the track list.
Here are the song titles I have chosen:
Hold On (already on there, song for my video)
These Streets
Give Up
Tonight
Get Some
Wait
Savages
Never Never
Everybody Knows
Oblivion 

These are not all of the songs I looked at but they are pretty much the majority I looked at. I am really happy with these song titles and I think they will make a really good, successful and realistic looking back cover track list.

Problem with scheduling and filming.

Due to heavy work load and commitment, my female artist has been very limited in time and I have been unable to plan with her when to film as she has been committed to a lot of things and hasn't had a lot of time. I am very understanding that she has to focus on her studies and my schedule has also been quite hectic so we have not had any time when we were both free, so due to this I have been unable to film. I have explained to her I am in need of filming soon as I am running out of time and she understands this, so hopefully we can both organise a time when we are both free so we can do this. My male artist is very flexible with his time so I know he will be available pretty much when I need him so this is good, I am now just relying on my female artist.

I will update on the situation as soon as I know anything and hopefully I will get the footage I need as soon as possible so I can edit the rest of my video. 

Record Label Research

For my music label, I have decided to look at an existing record label rather than creating my own as this will take a lot of time and research and I want to be able to use my time productively. I thought about what type of record label I would want to have and I would prefer to have an indie label rather than a label from one of the major conglomerates in the 'Big 3'. The reason I have chosen to research and use an indie label is because I feel as though the song I have chosen to do is originally from an indie artist so it would make sense to have an independent label for my products.

I have chosen to look at the indie label XL Recordings. The reason I have chosen to look at this label is because I am quite familiar with it because for my AS coursework I looked at this label so therefore I already know a bit about it and I feel more confident talking about it.

Artist/Album Name and Experimenting with Fonts

For my ancillary texts, I need to think of an artist name and album name. I have thought about many ideas like: Lewis Ryan, Lewis and Lewis Stewart. I feel like Lewis and Lewis Stewart is too basic and having his full name doesn't really make him sound like an artist. Due to this, I think having my artist called Lewis Ryan will work best as it sounds more professional and would be taken more seriously. I kind of took this idea from the existing artist Troye Sivan as his full name is Troye Sivan Mellet so therefore he has only used his first and middle name. I think this is a really good idea and as I knew I was looking for an album name, I thought I would search about Troye in more detail.


Troye Sivan is a singer/songwriter,actor and YouTube Personality from Perth, Western Australia, originally born in South Africa. On 15 August 2014, he released his first major label EP which was titled 'TRXYE' and it peaked at number 5 on the Billboard 200. The lead single, "Happy Little Pill", reached number 10 in the Australian charts. He is currently in the process of writing and recording his debut full-length studio album.

I really like his album name 'TRXYE' and I think this could work really well for my own album so I have decided that I will use this idea and call my artists album 'LXWXS'. Having my artists album be called this makes him really stand out and I think the idea is quite unique. Also, I have decided to put the 'X' in the place of the vowels 'I' and 'E' because I think it looks better with the 2 X's as opposed to the one.

I am now going to experiment with some different fonts from dafont.com and see which ones work best for my digipak.

 This font is called Aku&Kamu. This is the first font I looked at and I really like it and think it would work well on my album cover as I am wanting something that is quite bold and eye-catching. My only problem with it is that it is too basic and would make my product look unprofessional.

                                      

This font is called Atlantic Cruise. I really like this one as I don't think it is too over the top but it is also not too basic. I think it could work really well for my album, especially because of how bold the font is. If I were to use this I would probably change the colour so it is more visible to read.

 This font is called Biscuit Pro. I also really like this one, again because of how bold it is. This time it is a little bit thicker, which is what I am wanting so this is good. The only problem with this one is I don't like how the 'Y' is designed because it looks really odd and out of place.

                                     

 This font is called Limbus. I saw this one advertised and I liked the look of it but when I put in the artist name and album name it didn't really appeal to me because it doesn't look like a font which would appear on an album cover. I could see this font on something like merchandise rather than a CD cover.

 This font is called More Candy. This is one of my favourites and is one I will possibly use because I love the painted effect it has and I think it will look really good on my album. As my artist's genre is indie, I want the text to reflect this which is why I like the look of this alternative font style.

                                     

 This font is called Neoteric. I really like this as I liked how spaced out it is. I really like how the 'W' crosses like it does as well, which I think makes it look more interesting.

This font is called Nusantara. I really liked this one when I saw it on dafont.com and I think it could work but I didn't consider the detail of it and how it would look on the type of album. Due to this, I feel like this would not work for my own album cover. 

                                        

 This font is called Paramore. Obviously, I immediately recognised the name and the type of font. Paramore are an existing band who are in the rock genre. This font was used on their self-titled album. As much as I really like this font, I feel like because it has been used on an existing product, I could get done for copyright if there is any.

                                     

This font is called Zyana. This is my least favourite out of the fonts I've looked at because I don't like how the 'x' looks in LXWXS. Also, I don't think it will really fit in with the rest of the album and the overall look of the album.

My favourite fonts out of this list are:
Aku & Kamu
Paramore
Neoteric 
More Candy

I will experiment with these fonts on some mock up album covers and I will show these in another post.

CD Disc Conventions

This is my YouTube video on the conventions of a CD. I looked at different existing products which had different designs on to see the different conventions and to also see what type of CD design I would like to use when creating my own CD. (Please pause at the relevant parts because the slides aren't on long enough and they will go through them too fast).

 

CD Spine Conventions

This is my presentation on the conventions of CD spines. I have looked at a variety of different album spines to compare and also to see the difference and see what the main conventions are.