My role in this coursework is the director, despite that I decided to contribute to my team by creating the social media, tour dates, CD, CD holder, merchandise, and most of the overall digipak. I used the apps: Procreate, Lightroom, Picsart, Canva, Ibispaint X, and more to create the digipak. 

The first draft of the album cover was created by Kimberly:

I was inspired by this and decided to edit a few of my own versions in varying hues and styles so my team and I could vote on our favorite one

I decided to do some research on various album covers with a red theme as I wanted the digipak to have an overarching red theme to establish branding. I realized that albums that typically use red in their covers use high contrast lighting, which reflects the themes of all the albums below, which are about heartbreak, depression, and other topics that are relevant in this day and age. These are also the themes I would like to show in my album cover, hence I wanted to follow this trend. 

Copyright Information:

We used the template to make it easier for us to transfer the image:

Initially, I was inspired by Avril Lavigne's "Love Sux", and I tried to replicate it by using a rose with a red background as I thought it would be similar to her cover of balloons and red background. However, the roses did not provide the same contrast as the balloons and hence it did not look very aesthetically pleasing. My teammates and I also felt like it looked outdated, so I decided to do more research. 

After looking at more red CDs, i found that most actually did not have any graphics or images on the CD. I also looked at modern CDs such as "Midnights" by Taylor swift and discovered that it did not need to be one blocked colour, instead textures and effects were used to differentiate it from other CDs. I also liked how she put a graphic in the middle of the CD. 

I decided to make the CD resemble a droplet/clot of blood in order to better fit the theme of the album. In order to do that To achieve this, I searched for reference images to know how to convey my concept for the design.

From these images I learned that blood has a dark middle and it goes lighter on the edges. I also found that blood usually had a white/orange highlight so I also decided to replicate that. 

Hence I used these base to create some drafts:

I chose to put a graphic in the middle of the CD to further show a sense of branding. For option A , I chose a heart made out of roses as it combines two of the elements present in our media products, love and roses. For option B, I decided to try a 'scrapbook' feel by using a broken heart made out of scribbles.

My team and I decided to choose option A as we felt that using a consistent  font for the title was important to establish branding. We also felt that the heart graphic on option B felt fake and too cartoony.

I chose to create the record label "Rose Records" as I thought it could be interesting that her record label would have a similar theme with her album. However I did not choose a special meaning for the distributor, MD, as distributors usually do not have any input for how the album goes. I chose both of these logos to be red as I thought that black would be unintelligible against the dark red background and I thought that white would not really suit the theme.

Typically digipaks have a large eye-catching image in the front, hence I decided to use the 'rose' picture as I thought it fit the theme for the front cover of the booklet. For the back cover, I put all of the songs in the album, along with who produced, engineered, mastered, and written the song. 

• Radiohead broke conventions with their album "Kid A" when they released their 'secret' booklet. This booklet contained the lyrics of the songs with varying fonts to give a sense of disorderliness and disorientation. They also added graphics and images that made it seem like it was in a newspaper article. I was extremely inspired by this and decided to take some of these elements by using different fonts in my booklet as well to create a diary/scrapbook feel. However, I decided against using the display typefaces and opted instead to use handwriting fonts as I felt that it would make it seem like a journal entry. I also felt that the use of caricaturized people did not fit our theme, so I decided to seek more references.

• One of the references was the digipak for The Weeknd's "After Hours.", I felt that the use of black and red really emphasizes the whole theme of the album, so I decided to incorporate that in some aspects of my digipak.

For all the pages of the digipak, I spent 2 weeks editing and ensuring that all the images made sense with the songs its meant to represent, and in total it took me around 20 hours as I spent a long time picking fonts, images, and cutouts. I used different handwriting and calligraphy typefaces to bring home the 'scrapbook' effect, almost as if it was torn out of a journal. I also used cutouts of images that relates to the lyrics of each individual song. 

The Cutouts

In order to find the 'embellishments' that would suit my booklet, I used various key words and tags in Canva, such as "scrapbook", "torn", "texture", amongst many others.

Scrapbook

For the first two pages, I decided to continue with the red high contrast theme. 

For Brutal: I put a cutout of lips with fangs drinking an alcoholic beverage, this was used to illustrate the lyrics "That I'll die before I drink ". 

For Traitor: I used a cutout of an eye to illustrate the lyrics "Brown guilty eyes and little white lies" 

For Drivers License: I used the image of cars, and a cutout of a house to give imagery to the lyrics "To finally drive up to your house"

For 1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back : I used the phone cutout to illustrate the lyrics "Called you on the phone today"

For Deja Vu: To show imagery for the lyrics:" Car rides to Malibu, Strawberry ice cream" I chose strawberry cutouts to represent the ice cream and a cutout of a palm tree as they are common in Malibu.

For Enough For U: I used various cosmetic items and a mirror to serve as imagery for the lyrics " I wore makeup when we dated, 'Cause I thought you'd like me more"

For Happier: I decided to use the butterfly and smile imagery to illustrate the lyrics "She probably gives you butterflies, I hope you're happy"

For Jealousy, Jealousy: I used the phone and smile imagery to give the lyrics " I kinda wanna throw my phone across the room, 'Cause all I see are girls too good to be true, With paper-white teeth and perfect bodies" some imagery. 

For Favorite Crime: I wanted to illustrate the lyrics "And I watched as you fled the scene, Doe-eyed as you buried me, One heart broke, four hands bloody" I used the a cutout of the deer to represent the "doe eyes", the cutout of the grave to represent how he "buried" the artist, the bloody hand to represent the "four hands bloody" and the skull and handcuffs to represent the "crime"

For Hope Ur OK: I used a hand cutout that is 'reaching out' to show how the artist is reaching out to people and hoping they are okay. I also used the sky and bird imagery to represent the lyrics "And when the clouds are ironed out. "

I decided to challenge conventions by adding photocards, which is typically only present in the K-Pop industry. The reason for this is that our target audience is Gen-Z, who are usually fans of K-pop, this will immensely help the marketing of the album as it will peak the interest of K-pop fans.

Photocard back cover types:

After doing more research, I found out that almost all K-pop albums come with at least 2 versions of albums (that audiences could choose from) that came with 2 versions of photocards. 

For her profile, I chose her follower count to be in the 20 millions, as I wanted to show that she is a popular artists. Many young artists in Gen-Z have this level of stardom, examples include:

I also put a song lyric in her bio as most artists reference their new album in their bio

I also put a link in her bio to her komi.io which is similar to a linktree, it's use is to direct audiences to many of the artist's websites. 

I wanted to break conventions and make her Instagram feed very curated, to boost her serious and mysterious aura.

I wanted the image to feel like it was taken with a fisheye lens, capturing the sense of the subject blocking out noise and creating a disorienting vibe. 

At first, I selected Caylee's face, reduced the opacity and directly overlayed it on top of her face as i thought it would further create the disorienting atmosphere. However, this  obscured some of her features and made the picture confusing to look at, so i decided to zoom out and use a medium shot instead of a close up shot to maintain clarity. Initially, I had also decided to change the hue of the image to red which did not give much variety to the posts, hence i decided against that. I also noted that her expression was smiling which did not fit our theme hence I tried to edit this to look more annoyed/stern by bringing the corners of her lips down. 

I decided to offer three types of clothing merchandise, each available in two color options: white and black. This selection includes a unisex T-shirt and hoodie to cater to a broader audience, targeting the mass market. 

Additionally, I decided to create a tank-top/crop-top option, as I found that this style is popular among young women, who are the target demographic for our artist. 

I followed conventions by having the artist or album name on the clothing, as well as having the album cover on some of the clothing options. 

After doing research, I realized that modern day singers with alternative pop styles usually sell very unique merchandise that is specific for their audience. 

I decided to try my best to replicate this in a smaller scale by doing a sticker pack. Which is an unconventional merchandise option for singers but has also been done by a handful of artists. 

I also felt like stickers fit our "scrapbook" theme very well as stickers could be used to decorate journals, diaries, and even scrapbooks!

As our entire media product has the theme of 'scrapbook' and 'red' I decided that it would be appropriate for our artist to sell a "SOUR!" themed notebook/journal to further establish branding. I made 2 color variations for the journals to match with the two back covers of the photocards to further create a sense of branding. 

Kimberly was in charge of editing the MV, she kept me updated every step of the way and we shared ideas about the MV on a daily basis. The app, Capcut, was used in ending the MV as it was accessible, free, and portable as it was available in many devices. 

We wanted the color scheme of the MV to go from teal/green to red to show the descent of the artist's sanity. We also included conventions such as adding a title card and artist's name.