Album cover evaluation

For Production we were told to come up with both a character and produce a digi-pack cover for the purpose of Andy Mallen (M.boy) and his new album titled “Video boy”. My first thought was to begin researching into how digi-packs of similar quality are laid out normally. Whilst looking into the layout of our pack we had to research and come up with a design for the front, spine, back, lyric section and disk impression whilst also having to consider the print style we were going to use for our pack and experiment with different techniques, materials and styles. I began with designing three separate albums for different band of my own design, purely so that I have an opportunity to experiment with colour, contrast and layout of an album cover.

Whilst designing my album covers I did two initial designs. One which had a more cartoon like style to it in order to make its appearance more appealing and the other being made up of a simple logo that was designed so that it stood out completely from the rest of the album cover.

The main reason I chose to do these two designs is because I wanted to see which type of age group would benefit more from this sort of music and so made these designs in an attempt to see which would work. To me both designs stand out to me, my first design for it cartoon like appearance as many album covers don’t seem to follow the same designs as mine does, whilst my logo design stands out for it use of colour and the contrast between the logo itself and the background that I picked for it.

After producing both albums I produced a survey asking which design people would most prefer and why. The results were fairly mixed but more people preferred the album I designed with just the logo on it, quoting that they like the simplicity of the design, how it seems much more professional due to the contrast between the colours and the background. So from what I can make out after producing my survey is that most people would prefer the second logo as it seems to relate more to other modern designs and products.

I believe that another main reason why people seemed to grow fonder of my second album design was because the layout was much simpler compared to my first album. The layout is much simpler and doesn’t consist of loads of extreme pictures, which I think made the first cover much more complex. With the new album the cover has three main aspects, the logo, the title at the bottom and the black background. By making sure that the logo and title are the same colour, it helps point out that they are related whilst making sure that they stand out completely against the background. I didn’t wish to have any pictures for the background as I was worried it would make the overall result too complex for an album cover. One of the references I looked back on occasionally was the design shown above of the “Harmonic” album as it has a very simple pattern

LEFT: Old cartoon video

boy album design

RIGHT: New video boy logo album design

whilst still managing to make itself look appealing and eye catching. For the inside of the cover itself again I didn’t want to create anything to complicated either so I stuck with simple designs but I first planned out how I would set about having my album laid out. I chose to go with a layout similar to the plan shown above as most digi-packs are designed with this style in mind. For backgrounds again I didn’t want to overdo the album with intense photos or pictures so I went for a design where by the inside covers resembled speakers to help relate what type of music the CD consists of. The CD itself I chose to have matched the album cover so that again they elate to one another and means that if people lose the box then they will still be able to recognize what band the CD plays.

For the artwork and design of the logo the only thing I looked to for reference was as mentioned earlier the “Harmonic” album, the logo itself was designed by me completely and had no referencing to it. However For the font used and the background for the back cover and DVD inside as inspired by the film posters for “Tron legacy” which followed a similar design when it came to having the covers laid out in a grid like style with a blue font. Although most people liked the design which I worked on one thing I had to take into consideration was the legal issues. I designed this album cover to appeal to all age groups and social groups and is in no way designed to appeal or offend any religious cultures.

After completing my album cover design I find it safe to say that I did benefit from this production and managed to learn a great deal in how to produce this form of media such as how to go about laying out designs. What I think I really learned the most is that I should never consider placing huge quantities of art and design onto just one side of an album cover as it does make the album seem clutters and complex, better to keep designs simple yet effective much like the design I finally went with.

My technical ability overall was acceptable as I managed to produce most of my work with ease but at first whilst I was working on my first design I found it very difficult to work with certain programs such as Photoshop as I hadn’t had proper teaching on how to use such programs. But as I began to work more and more with these programs my skills started improving and before long I knew my way around the programs much more quickly and easily. When it came to designing my second album cover I first thought about what would look both creative and yet appealing. From what I produced on my first album cover I realised that too much is not as good if it looks rushed which was what happened with my first cover as I was spending much of my time trying to figure out how to use the programs that we were meant to be working with.

The whole process overall I felt was successful as I accomplished my goal in creating my digi-pack cover which managed to capture my target audiences interests. I certainly learnt a lot about the process that is undertaken and how to lay out my research. I found the best way to go about working up to producing a final piece such as this was to firstly research into other album covers, figure out where they got their designs and why, before producing my own examples to test how affective they really can be. What I think really help boost peoples interests in my cover was by modifying my first digi pack so that it was easier for people to make out what was on the cover and also to take out a great deal of the work I had put into it which made it much easier to notice the title of the band and album name. If I could work on it again I would definitely set myself more time to come up with different designs as time was one of my main problems and concerns with the making of the cover.