Album Art - Is Your Digipak Really Going To Sell?

In this lesson I was taught more about what it takes to make a good digipak and this lesson has helped me greatly with my own thoughts towards my digipak. What I was taught is that print and web design in the music industry is really about identity. What our audience, potential customer or client can expect to hear, feel, experience or identify with is communicated visually. I also learnt that a talented designer understands the power of text (typography) and images, and knows how to use them creatively. In order to find out whether my digipak is successful or not these are some of the things that I can look at to see if what I have created is a success;

• is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates and immediate connection and sense of belonging.
• is there an information and visual hierarchy? This means there's a focal point or image that grabs your attention first and then your eye is led around the design in the order of what's important after seeing the main image or reading the main text.
• does the design have graphic impact? is it distinctive or memorable? There are many CDs competing with your for attention (lots of demos are sent out to producers, potential crew, record labels and distributors), so yours must be a major contender.
• is it appropriate for whom you want to attract and the environment in which it will be presented? A poster or CD for a country audience will not have the same look and feel presentation as for a heavy metal one.

Why is this image so iconic? This is such an important question because it's just so plain and simple but yet who can forget the strong identity between the Rolling Stones and this bring, red tongue? It's a very powerful example of a highly successful design. The Stones logo has graphic impact. is distinctive and memorable, and is appropriate for its Rock audience.

When looking into the history of cover art design, the golden can be seen to have begun in the early to mid 1960s and lasted into the early 1980s. In this time cover art became a part of the musical culture of the time. Often used to express graphically the musicians artistic intent, it helped connect and communicate to listeners the message or underlying theme of the album. Album cover art went through a change in the 1990's and had a rebirth as the designers learned to capture snapshots and portions of the artist's musical intent rather than trying to convey the entire message. Also designers started conveying the emotion of the music rather than the musical intent.

Analysis Of Digital Pack

Other Analysis;

• Starting with the front cover we can see that there is a graffiti styled images used of instruments and it seems to be appearing from behind the artist and title of the digi pack. This is telling the audience a little about what these two artists have created here, it also tells the audience what to expect from the music inside.
• The typology used for the artists names and the name of the album/digi pack is block capitals that also look like they could be graffiti, this links in with the overall theme of the digi pack.
• When looking at the colour scheme throughout the pack we can see that there are three main colours used, orange, blue and white. These colours are consistent throughout the pack. A little bit of black has also been used in the pack to add another stand out effect on it. This will be something that I can think about with regards to my digi pack as I think I will have to have a colour scheme that runs throughout that ties in with my artists and his genre in order to make my digi pack as successful as this one.
• When looking at the codes and conventions of the digi pack, on most you will find the contents of what is in the pack on the back of it and this will be something that I am going to incorporate on my digipack and the things that I will need to include on the back of my pack are; barcode, track list, explicit content sticker perhaps?, special features, recordings perhaps?, our music record label and I have to make sure that it is split into sections as to not make it confusing. So when looking at this pack I would hope to organise it in the same way so that it is easy for the audience to read unless I could make it messy and jumble it up as this could tie in with my music video in the way that it is quite random. 
• The spines on the digi pack are quite simple as they have the artists names written down the side along with the name of the album, the DVD symbol is also there to show that there is a DVD inside, this is something useful that I may want to include on my digi pack.
• The inside flap is much like the front on the digi pack, it connotes the content inside and what is to expect from the artist and the songs inside. As we can see the music instruments that were in the background on the front of the digi pack have disappeared and now there is just block capitals of the two artists which is bold and stands out enough on its own. This is something that I could perhaps include on my digi pack.
• The design within the digi pack is a wallet compartment for the booklet, another wallet for the tracks and then a final CD holder for the DVD. I think this is a perfect design for a digi pack and I think that this is very close to how I want my digi pack to look.
• The theme of the digi pack carries on throughout with the white music instrument effect used throughout. Even of the CD and DVD the colour theme is also carried through to good effect as i think this is what stands out the most to me when I look at the inside, so I think that this is something for me to think about with regards to my digi pack, possible having a stand out colour used on my CD that makes it stand out compared to the rest of the digi pack.

Mood Board

This is our mood board and underneath is a presentation on our mood board and the ideas that are within our mood board.

Adorno And Horkeimer's Theory

The Culture Industry
Adorno and Horkheimer were philosophers and took on the term 'culture industry' to argue that the way in which items were produced was comparable to how other industries manufactured vast quantities of consumer goods. What this is stating is that the culture industry is always made up of the same things and a pattern can be seem between how some items are produced compared to other items within the culture industry. Adorno and Horkheimer also argued that the culture industry showed an 'assembly-line character' which could be observed in the synthetic, planned method of turning out its product. Adorno and Horkheimer's point here is that they (the industry) just want to make as much money out of them (the product) as possible in a short amount of time.

The X-Factor Machine
Adorno and Horkeimer linked the idea of the 'culture industry' to a model of 'mass culture' in which cultural production had become a routine, standardised repetitive operation that produced undemanding cultural commodities which in turn resulted in a type of consumption that was also standardised, distracted and passive. What Adornon and Horkeimer is stating here is that we've become so adjusted to these pop artists that we really don't expect anymore so this is why it is becoming more and more easier to make things that will wow an audience as the audience only need a little something changed with regards to the artist or their songs in order to make it more special than the last artist who was loved by the public.

Who's In Control
Adorno and Horkheimer's view of cultural production has, with some justification, often been portrayed as the pessimistic lament of cultural elitists who were dismayed at what they perceived to be the homogeneity and vulgarity of 'mass' taste and who were concerned that the potential for artistic creativity in music, literature and painting had been co-opted and corrupted by the production methods and administrative regimes of industrial capitalism. Adorno and Horkheimer's views here are that it is disappointing to see that everything has become the same within the industry and it's horrible as now anything that is for a mass audience is just the same and is produced the same way each time. Also Adorno and Horkheimer stressed the structures of economic ownership and control of the means through which cultural products are produced and argued that this directly shapes the activities of creative artists and consumers.

The X-Factor
Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the 'culture industry' operated in the same way as other manufacturing industries. All work had become formalised and products were made according to rationalised organisational procedures that were established for the sole purpose of making money.Adorno and Horkheimer is arguing that everything is dragged out to the longest possible point in order to gain more money from the viewers, X factor is an example of this as their series runs for a long time consisting of; auditions, boot camp, judges houses, live shows, semi final (celebrities) and the final.

Standardisation
Adorno and Horkheimer argued that all products produced by the culture industry exhibited standardised features. The argument here is that there is nothing spontaneous about the process of cultural production. It has become a routine operation that can be carried out in an office by the application of specific formulae. Adorno noted that songs which became successful over time were often referred to as 'standards', a category that clearly drew attention to their formulaic character. From the 'plan' to the details, songs were based around repetitive sequences and frequently recurring refrains. This as done for quite calculated commercial reasons, so that the song would imprint itself on the mind of the listener and then provoke a purchase. For Adorno, the production of bit songs had become a mechanical and manipulative operation motivated purely by commercial gain. Think about the popular songs that you might hear throughout an average day (radio, shopping, television, club or bar). Are songs becoming too predictable? are they becoming standardised.This is stating that we have to look far and else where to find something that is unique and doesn't sound like a different song that you've already heard.

Pseudo Individuality (Pseudo meaning false)
Adorno and Horkheimer were also critical of what they referred to as pseudo individuality. By this they meant the way that the culture industry assembled products that made claims to 'originality' but which when examined more critically exhibited little more than superficial differences. Adorno and Horkheimer invoked the image of the lock and key, an item that is mass produced in millions, whose uniqueness lies in only very minor modifications. Adorno and Horkheimer are stating here that with regards to the X factor the winners who come from that show are all the same and have very minimal differences.

To Conclude
Adorno and Horkheimer believe that the culture industry allows people to become 'masses' and be easily manipulated by capitalist corporations and authoritarian governments. Adorno and Horkheimer thus present us with a powerful arguement about what happens to culture when it is subect to the structural control and organisation of industrial capitalist production, it becomes merely a standardised, formulaic and repetitive element of 'mass culture'. It has no aesthetic value whatsoever and leads to a very specific type of consumption that is passive, obedient and easily manipulated for the purpose propaganda or advertising.

Choosing Our Brief And Brainstorming Ideas

In this lesson we as a class split ourselves into groups in which we would be making our music video together. I decided that I wanted to work with Luke, Aaron and Luke. Once we had settled down we were them given the 7 briefs to look through in order to decide which we wanted to make a music video for. Once we had looked through all of the briefs we narrowed it down to three briefs and then selected this one from the three as this specific brief match each of our thoughts and ideas. What we all liked most about this brief was mostly that the dislikes of 'Magma' was pop videos and no one in the group wanted to make a pop video. The best thing about this criteria that the group liked was that the artist didn't need to feature within the music video and the greatest thing about the dance/house genre is that it can be as random as you want it to be.

Now that we had chosen the brief that we wanted to make a music video for, we then began to look into greater detail at how we may need to change the brief so that it matched what we may want to do with regards to our ideas. The only thing that we wanted to change on our brief was the name of the band as we thought that this wasn't really a good name for an upcoming DJ (it didn't really stand out). So we brainstormed new ideas for the name of the DJ and we also began to think of some ideas which may take place within our music video. As you can see below these are the ideas that we thought of within our group.

Ideas
Some of our ideas include;

• Having plenty of dance routines throughout our music video to make it into a very dancey video.
• To have four main dancers within the video. I think four is the best number as it's not too overwhelming and at the same time it's not too boring.
• I think our main idea is based around spoofing other iconic pop videos. The reason why we have chosen this as our main idea is because we feel that our artists, DJ Boosh doesn't like cheesy pop videos and so we think that spoofing the videos would be the best idea for our music video.
• Some of the music videos that we wish to spoof include; Queen - I Want To Break Free (which will include dressing up in drag), perhaps some S Club 7 music videos, The Ketchup song and even a new chart topper at the moment called Gangnam Style.
• What we plan to do is use the scenes from each of these videos and use their dance routines in order to spoof the videos.
• We plan to use random cosutmes that include morph suits and drag (for the Queen video) in order to hide our dancers identities but at the same time make it loom fun.
• I think it would be a good idea to add a rewind effect within our video to add a bit of fun to the video.
• Our locations could include us being anywhere, so we have decided at the moment to keep that at an open option as the pop videos that we may want us to do could lead us anywhere from a living room in a house or even a gym.  

Introduction To Music Videos

What is the purpose of a music video;

• To create a recognisable image that will appeal to the Target Audience
• Marketing tool for the artist/band
• Increase airplay of the song for example on the radio or om TV
• Create more interest in the album
• Sell singles, albums and the band/artists brand

Media Theorist - Andrew Goodwin

Wrote about music videos and stated that they follow certain rules and codes and conventions. He stated that there are 6 rules;

1. The record company's demands for exposure of the artist will mean a lot of close-up shots of the singer/band.
2. There will be a relationship between the music and visuals.
3. There will be a relationship between the lyrics and visuals.
4. There will be genre characteristics, for example rock music videos show live music performances, hip hop videos present images of wealth and a 'gansta' lifestyle and boy bands have dance routines.
5. There will be references to the notion of looking for example television screens and mirrors with people looking at each other or at the audience. Voyeurism and scopophillia can be linked to this as well as the male gaze theory.
6. There will be some use of inter textual referencing.

Formula For Analysing Music Videos  (remember denotation and connotation)

1. Denotation of performance, narrative and other visual elements
2. Genre characteristics and cinematography - apply Goodwin
3. Mise-en-scene
4. Editing - connecting images with lyrics, has SFX been used? To what effect? Apply Goodwin
5. Notion of looking - apply Goodwin if possible
6. Inter textual referencing -  is there any? whats the effect?

Jay Z - 99 Problems

• High speed editing from start to finish, shows the audience the codes and conventions o a hip hop/RnB video.
• The costume that Jay-z is wearing within the video connotes that the genre of the music video is hip hop/RnB as he is wearing; gold chains, baseball cap, big bomber jacket, baggy jeans and is showing a derogatory treatment of women which is usual in these types of videos.
• We can see the way in which women are being treated as they are being shown as objects as they pose in bikinis.
• A lot of illegal stuff is happening within the videos as there are dog fights, violence as well as drugs.
• The setting os in a dangerous neighbourhood (maybe Brooklyn) a run down area that shows prison fences, basketball courts and people in balaclavas shooting guns.
• Record shop shots are shown throughout the video, suggests 'keepin it real' it represents jay z as having musical integrity.
• Black and white effect 'ghetto style' perhaps representing old american films, opposite of the usual romantic narrative in old american films, the effect makes everything seem darker/more rundown.
• Intertextual reference to Rick Ruben - founder of Def Jam i.e the triangle Jay-z makes with his hands.
• Low angles of Jay-z and close ups used make him look powerful, puts the audience in awe of him.

• Goodwins theory can be applied as the lyrics match the visuals, especially on the pieces of cardboard the elephant holds up.
• Narrative of the music video could possibly be linked to the the story of the leader within the band Coldplay.
• The song paradise also could help us as the audience to understand what the music video is about and why they have made it in this way. 
• We as the audience can hear through the lyrics that the elephant (Coldplay lead singer) is trying to find his Paradise.
• As the band member takes the elephant mask of half way through the song this is perhaps a 'cocky' thing to do by the band member, maybe he wants to prove that he can ride a unicycle and that its not someone else.
• The costume suggests that in fact the lead singer of Coldplay wants the audience to know that its a real person and not an actual elephant.
• As per usual in a soft rock/indie video we are shown a shot of the band playing their instruments together, this is a code and convention of this genre.
• Through the lyrics and the visuals as well as the title we as an audience can establish that this music video is trying to tell us that perhaps the lead singer of Coldplay was trying to find his paradise in his own life an now that he has his band that finally he's in Paradise and has found the freedom he's been looking for.