Music front covers

For the photographs to be taken for a cover for my digipak, I first needed to look in more depth at the design of front covers for a CD package. Here are three different designs, and what I think are key features to use in my own creation.

The first design that I looked at was for Leona Lewis' album, 'Spirit'. The large image almost filling up the whole cover is the most noticeable thing of the whole design, with the delicate white sheet behind her, to give an angelic approach. The photograph is in colour but has many shadows over her face and body, again to give a delicate impact on her femenine features, and not making the image look flat. The title of the artist is place in the lower third of the design and is in gold lettering, as is the album title shown lower down, giving an official and classic smart look to the design, making it appealing as it is not bright and outrageous, but modest yet elegant, perhaps a direct reference to Leona herself. In the centre of these titles we have Leona's name hand-rendered in white writing to match the innocence of the sheet she is standing infront of, and making it personal to the audience as though she is writing directly to them. I like the idea of the hand-rendered text as it is bringing the audience in closer to advertise and sell the product to them as an individual, therefore I have decided to use this in my own creation. I think the smart text is also fitting and appealing to my own design, as the genre of the video is love and romance, therefore does not need to be big and bright, but modest and elegant as in her own cover.

The next design that I am looking at is for Rihanna's album 'Take A Bow'. In this design her expression is not directly towards the camera and is much more passive and natural. She is shown in full colour looking downwards at something sadly, perhaps signifying the genre of the song is a sad love song about someone, therefore the pose she is doing represents what the audience will experience within the song. She is stood infront of a grey out of focus background, with large black text in the lower third spelling out her name, with the title of the album below in smaller font and in a purple colour to perhaps match with the colours in the photograph. This is a very simplistic design with the idea that what you see is what you get, as Rihanna is not shown playing up infront of the camera or posing in an unnaturalistic way, but being completely passive and unaware of the audience. I like this simplistic idea, so will experiment with it in my own design.

The final design is that of Adele's single 'To Make You Feel My Love', which is the inspiration of our own video. This design is similar to Rihanna's with the simplstic test and out of focus background, however Adele is looking straight into the camera, making the audience aware that she is present in the photograph. I think that this stands out to the audience, so I will experiement with this approach to see the effect also in my photographs. Adele also includes hand-rendered text to personalise the design and the song with the audience, something I will include in my design.