Development of Front Cover Picture.

I have decided that it would be best to draw most of the front cover as it will be complicated to manipulate the tube map in photoshop and it might not look as artistic. Also I have decided to include writing of the names of the tube stations in the style of Bold & Noble's work. They use simple fonts of name places to create prints of countries and cities which is really effective.

Although Bold & Noble use clear fonts and the emphasis is on making it readable, I think I will wear the text away slightly so it has a faded, aged look which will link to the concept and also not take the focus too much off the overall picture.

Change In Music Video

After we recieved feedbck for our music video, we have decided that it would be more effective to have a male singer lip-syncing the song. We have already chosen our lip-syncer, his name is Henry, although he doesn't look like a member of OneRepublic, we can always change that by changing his appearance, clothes, hair etc.

We are als going to try and intergrate the shots of him in with the narrative by using pictures of him with Katie so the audience understand that the two people are connected.

Re-thinking the panoramic image in the centre.

After experimenting with cutting out the individual landmark, I have realised that it won't quite look right creating a montage with landmarks to create a skyline effect.

It doesn't look right because the buildings do not have the same angle of light which creates shadows in different directions. Also it looks too cut out and moulded together to be effective it would have to look more natural.

The only way it could work would is if I did it as a silhouette of the buildings and trees. However I will then lose the contrast between black and white/ colour and the gritty look of the city.

So instead for the centre I am going to go back the individual photograph per page idea.

Evaluation of Digipak

After having the feedback , I found that a few improvements were needed for my Digipak and Poster in order for me to get the grade I wanted.

The first thing I have to do it to change the layout of the current Digipak as it doesn't look like a conventional Digipak that you would normally see. What I have created for my draft looks more like inserts for a CD cover. For my final Digipak, I have decided that it will have six panels altogether, three inside and three outside. Another decision I have made after having the feedback is that I am going to be keeping the whole Digipak City focused. I think it works and looks better instead of incorporating both the country and the city into it.

The front cover of the Digipak doesn't need any dramatic changes, but from the feedback I found that instead of keeping the whole of the picture  black and white I should consider changing the colour of the London Underground to Red matching to the colour of the 'Colours' bit of the album name. This picture captures the very essence of the busy life of the city, I like the way that it shows the fast paced environment of the city even when its late at night, it shows that the city never sleeps.  Also on the back, I need to place the record and copyright information and also the barcode to make it look like a real Digpak as all of them have this on. In order to do this, I am going to have to make up a record company and also create the logo for it.

There a a few improvements that are needed on the back cover, for example with the colour of the text. The song 'Falling Leaves' is hard to see against contrast of the picture because of the blackness behind it. I am thinking of changing the colour of the text, but I have to think about keeping the colour scheme with the front. I could use white, but I think this will be unable to read because of the colour of the sky, it would just blend into it and make it hard to see.

I am going to be changing the inside pages completely, I don't think that it works together with the low contrast pictures of the city on the front and back. I think for the inside pages, I will be using images of the city, therefore really emphasising the main feature of the video which is the city although it features the country side aswell. I think that the city will just make it more interesting to look at, and I also think that it would catch people's attention more on the shelves at stores.

I am also looking at making a booklet to go inside of the digipak featuring the different images of London. Just like a gallery book to give the owner of the digipak more things to look at and to also really portray the concept and dull emotions of the city the we're trying to portray in the video.

Image for Front Cover.

For the front cover of my digipak, I am thinking of showing the city vs country concept in a different way. Taking the idea of a tree and its roots underground I am going to connect the country with the city by incorportating the tube map and making the lines the roots of the tree.

I will have to draw the map out so the lines are going in the direction I want, I also think I will make it simpler and remove some of the station names. I'm not sure yet whether I want the map in colour or not so I am going to have to create a more detailed mock-up to see what it looks like with and without colour and the station names.

This is the mock-up sketch of my idea. I think I would have the underground darker and faded but more dominant taking up 2 thirds of the picture, and the country skyline brighter and in colour. However I'm going to have to make a more detailed developed mock-up to see what works best.

Re-thinking the style of my digipak.

The idea of mixing the city and country by layering and cutting photographs on top of each other has not worked out as well as I had hoped so I going to look into using a different approach.

I have thought about the effectiveness of the folding out sections of the digipak and realised that they have to follow to look effective.

 So I am thinking about creating a panoramic photograph that incorporates the city and country in a mixed skyline/ landscape image.

For the front cover I am going to look into have a simple but effective image that will be eye-catching that shows the concept of city vs country better than the layered photo of my draft.

Developing digipak images.

I think I need to look into create simple effective photograph images for my digipak. I have played around with the effects in photoshop to enhance the photographs and see what works best.

I think the city shots in black & white work better because it links to the music video and can contrast well to the colourful country shots.

I think some of the effects in photoshop are too arty and the effect of the photograph is lost so I think I am going to keep it closer to the simpler original image.

I think the strong contrast like in this edit works really well and creates quite an eye-catching image.