MERAL ZAHID
DIGIPACK
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DIGIPACK RESEARCH
A digipak is a cardboard case used for CDs and DVDs, mostly made from environment-friendly material. The cardboard serves aesthetic purposes as well, focusing on the design aspects. It includes an internal plastic holder that can hold more than one disc and a plastic tray that the CD snaps into, which allows the discs to be held securely, making the Digipak more durable. Typically, digipaks are used for CD singles and special edition CDs for albums. Its origins trace back to 1974 when the Dutch electronics company Phillips developed a digital optical audio disk with error correction. Thus, the Digipak provides an edge against the standard CD jewel case in terms of environmental sustainability, durability, and visual appeal, with the same level of functionality.
Upon looking at digipaks within the “Indie” genre, which we had chosen, the overall theme uses subdued imagery or dull colours in contrast to what a digipak in other categories, such as pop, would hold. For example, for the album Digipaks of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and Everyday Life by The Lumineers, the most prominent features include the production company’s logo, a consistent theme following similar colours across, and the song list mentioned in the centre, giving a compact look.
Digipack design was allocated to Noor, I however contributed by creating our brand Kit for the artist and album in order to keep the digital design consistent on all platforms including Digipack, website and social media. Along with that I was involved in the planning of the design.
Branding our Album
Noor and I were in charge of creating the branding kit, so I hopped on a call with her, and we went through a myriad of fonts to shortlist potential ones that we liked. After looking for some font inspiration on Pinterest, I switched to Canva since there was a more comprehensive array of fonts I wanted to try out there. I shared the editable links so Noor could collaborate with me in real-time. After pondering over which fonts to choose ultimately, we decided to give it a day as Noor can take the time to finish up her album cover design she's working on, and we can test out the fonts then.
Aside from the font list, there was no doubt on the color palette as I had already planned it before even shooting, right when I had the Fiinal Idea that it would feature a maroon red color for our primary color paired with black and white as our secondary colors in our brand kit.
Album Cover Ideation
The cover art research required me to go over album covers I liked, so I compiled a bunch of covers overtime when I was listening to 179389 songs for the song selection post, screenshooting them from spotify into a notion page.
After suggesting tons of songs and albums names, we all decided on the following list of songs
Me:
Doomed from the stars
summer love
Athena
cherry coke
Noor:
gates of heaven
Zahra:
Wildflower Dreams
After finalising the songs we decided on the Album name SuperNova. Bringing my astronomical obsession into play the name SuperNova would symbolically fit with our MV. By definition it refers to a star in its last stage of life, burning with eight times more luminosity than our sun but in context of the album it would represent the ending of a relationship and the strong feelings that are attached with it. Ultimately making the ending a theme for our digipack.
DIGIPACK PLANNING & PRODUCTION
//This post was intended to be written by Noor, but due to her not being able to meet the deadline. This is a filler post written by me.
Initially we liked the idea that Noor would create this fragmented effect to show our artist exploring the emotion of feeling incomplete and lost in the world by following the color palette of our film opening, however I wanted to choose a specific frame in mind from the film opening since the day we shot it. I had shot this image using Noor's phone and saved it to my computer. Right when the time was right I suggested using it, it fit perfectly with the whole branding of our digipack.
We wanted our digipack to be dramatic and follow the motif of red string as we have in our music video to make this a continuing symbol through our branding.
An overtly simple placement of a image on digipack seems a little to basic so going a step ahead I recommended noor to try some experimental editing on the image I sent her.
Despite designing being assigned to noor, I once again found myself tweaking here and there and making one-page mockups, like last time I did for title cards. I had given Noor my feedback throughout the process and helped her out with finding mockups so there wasn't much to changes
An overview of some random designs I made that were discarded.
This is the final design for the entire Digipack, including a very, very blue CD with geometric lines, which I did not like, but since this was Noor's task, this was her stylistic choice. She justified it by saying it is bold and would thus help our artist stand out, which I agree with. The brand fonts we researched included crushed for the title and an ink pen font for the tracklist to give it a more indie look as if it's personalised. Giving the effect of it being diary-like.
With a plunge into the darker shades of red, contrasted by the pop of blue, the design tells a story of its own. The title in white highlights the album name and takes less space than the main image, which allows the focus to remain on the idea being depicted.
She has completed her post so I have attached it here.