CD Cover Design

Here is the cover we have designed for our artists CD. After doing a lot of research into similar genres CD covers, we felt this is the best interpretation. 

It's the first concept idea for it, but the general ideas are here. We wanted to do a lot of black and white so we used photos we took on the day of shooting and used them. We did some editing such as facial smoothness, blurring backgrounds, making a gradient round the edges of the photos and so on. 

For the front cover, we used a lot of white so we felt we had to contrast it by using black text. The handwritten font is also very much conventional with this Indie genre. For the photo used, we felt this was the best one we took of Joy and it looks very professional.

The back cover is the only image with colour being the red rose. We used this image we took because in the video it is one of the main props and we felt we needed it because it creates a theme of love and loss. We kept the back cover very simple like other CD covers were. We used the same font as the front cover and positioned the text in the middle. We also included the websites to find Joy at along with a bar code.

For the inside cover, we kept this extremely simple with only one photo of Joy outside the Jam Cafe. After looking at other similar genre conventions of CD covers, they all had one photo with minimal text. As for the CD itself, we used a victorian pattern gradient and just put our artists' name and album title.

Overall we think for a first effort, it looks visually pleasing and fits the website and all around theme very well. If we were to improve it, we could do something with the inside cover - maybe adding text.

We have used the ideas and effects from Jessie Ware's digipak because we liked how the contrast of the black and white overall creates a professional effect and makes the important text and photos stand out. 

We liked the use of the fade across the face of Jessie Ware in the front cover and we have used this fade effect on our photos. 

We also liked the layout of the front cover where the photo of the artist is centred and the title and album name is at the top and bottom of the page. We have used this idea for the layout of our front cover. 

For the CD, we wanted to keep it simple like the CD for Jessie Ware as this goes with the theme of the whole digipak because it is using the same contrasting colours and also the text stands out clearly. The text on the CD is the same font as the rest of the digipak to follow the theme and this is the same as the CD for Jessie Ware.

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We decided that having the rose behind the text was hiding it too much and it didn't bring out the colour of the rose which represents love. We decided to have the rose separate to the text of the song list as then we were able to bring out the colour and add effects such as an inner glow to make the rose look delicate and meaningful and also to give it a faded effect like we have for our photos.

We arranged the text of the song list at the side to look presentable on the page with the rose.

We also thought that we would add a bit more colour to the digipak so that it went well with the colours of the rose. We made our inside cover in colour because it has lots of different colours in this photo of Joy outside the Jam Cafe and this is where she performs so there are different feelings and moods associated with Joy and this location. We thought that having the colours in this photo would convey these moods and emotions.