Construction Post 5: Editing the Digipak

The construction of the digipak was a task which we were progressing with alongside our music video and website. Despite this, it became a very time-consuming process due to a couple of issues in communication. Nevertheless, our digipak has come together at a reasonable rate.

Our initial idea was to name the album 'The Honeymoon is Over', as this idiom reflects the indie style of our band very well. We wanted to construct our album cover in a similar design to The Ramones, as we recognised the effectiveness of both the black and white colour scheme and the iconography of the background as signifiers of the indie genre. We made a rough edit using some of our promotional shots with this idea and this was how our edit came out:

This is where the lack of communication became an issue. As all of us had different ideas on how we wanted to advance this idea, our rough edit lacked a clear focus. Nevertheless, we decided to gather some audience feedback to see if our concerns were misplaced.

Shayam was able to gather a good amount of feedback, and the responses were along the lines of what we had expected. Our feedback confirmed that the band members were too flat against the background, the genre wasn't particularly clear and the back panel was a little out of place. Though this design was unfinished, our feedback persuaded us to come up with some new ideas.

As the main point of contention with our album was the background, we started by coming up with some new ideas: 

As well as this, we had a look at some of our earlier flat plans: one in particular seemed like a good alternative.

Our initial reason for deciding against this design was that we believed that our actors would be too heavily obstructed. However, we decided to try adapting this design. We came up with a number of different designs.

Design 1

We started by replicating the design from our flat plan. As we had expected, the screens caused too much obstruction. We decided against this design as it did not provide a clear view of our band, which could have gone against our brief.

Design 2

We adapted design 1 further, and we were able to create this plan. We preferred this design much more, as not only did it show our band clearly, but we believed that having our band less ingrained in the static looked more professional.

We spent a lot of time debating the inside panels of our album. In the end, we opted for this design:

The four side on shots of our band members was an idea we had originally considered for the front cover of the album. Instead we have decided to put this design here. The right inside panel was loosely inspired by Joy Division, as one of their album covers was simply a collage of different words and phrases. We felt as though this was a good idea for connoting our indie genre, though we chose to take lines from the songs on our album instead of random phrases.

We were unsure which of the following two versions of the right inside panel to go with: 

When we gathered some audience feedback, most of our audience thought that the design on the left was better, as the contrast between the black and white was stronger. However, we had inhibitions about this design, as we realised it would oppose the colour scheme on the front of the album. Therefore we decided on the right design, though we toned down the intensity of the black.

This is how our final album design looks.

I am quite pleased with the outcome, though if we had more time I would have liked to make some minor changes to the inside of the album cover. Nevertheless, I believe our album connotes our band's genre and image very well.