Construction Post 5: Digipak post-production

Creating the Digipak was the probably the most difficult and time consuming aspect or post-production. This was very unexpected, as we felt that since our photo shoots had gone so well and our images were of good quality, post-production would be quite straight forward.

Initial Flat Plan Idea

Our Background Initial Ideas

We started the process by revising our initial ideas and the flat plan I had created. However, this didn't inspire my ideas, instead it has cause me to feel slight apprehensive about our album cover idea. Despite my concern, we have decided to continue with our idea a create a rough edit using our original images.

Here is the outcome of the rough edit:

 Unfortunately, this has only re-enforced my cause for concern and after a group meeting we have decided to get some audience feedback. We also confirmed that we were all interested in testing out the static idea. As a result, we have decided that Shayam will go and collect audience responses while I experiment with the idea of static.

We have now collected quite a lot of feedback and the large majority have confirmed my worries. Despite the constructive and useful advice, it was mostly negative. The most significant statistic was that 80% of the audience did not understand the symbolism of the heart-shaped balloons. In addition, over half of the people thought the brick wall was too cliche and 70% thought the lamp on the back panel was irrelevant. Although this is a set-back for our project, I am very keen to learn from their advice and improve the quality of our next ideas. In order to ensure this, I have created this list of the key criticisms and how we will avoid this occurring on the next draft.

Meanwhile, I have been experiment and developing our static idea. I was immediately inspired when I came across this image (right) on a google image search. I started to think that we should created an effect which looked like we are inside the TV. After checking that idea with my group, I tried to push the idea further and use 9 different screens that held a different part of the original image. After all the development of the ideas had been done we split up the jobs again. Shayam drew a new flat plan and I did a few rough edits of the cover.

Here were the outcomes:

New Flat Plan

New Rough Edit 1

New Rough Edit 2

New Rough Edit 3

As can be seen by Rough Edit 1+2, the 9 different screens didn't work very effectively as it cut of most of the faces. As a result we have decided to return to the primary static idea of one big screen, as seen in Rough Edit 3. The other significant change we made was the album name. Before we had started production we had planned to call it 'The Honeymoon Is Over...' and we felt that these sarcastic undertones would compliment our band's image very well. With that being said, we mutually agreed that it wouldn't make sense to use that title with this new static idea and so thought up a new title; 'No Signal'. This fits with the connotations of the cover whilst also accurately re-inhance our band's brand.


I then published Rough Edit 3 on Survey Monkey (an online surveying site) in order to gain some broader feedback. As you can see below, this received very positive responses and the changes to be made are only minor.

We have now made a few of these alterations and will begin to work on the 2 inside panels.

The process for the inside has been a lot easier, as I had a stronger idea of how it should look from the beginning. I started off by thing about what you normally find inside of an album and as a result I remembered the lyrics books that I used to sit and read when I was younger. This sparked my creativity and I began to think of a way that I could incorporate it into our inside cover in a satirical manor. I began testing it on Photoshop and this was the initial outcome.

I have used the lyrics to their single 'Trip Switch' and the duplicated them to the point where is becomes unreadable. I was very happy with the conceptual idea as it will be interpreted by our audience in a variety of different ways in order to gratify their own needs. However, as can be seen from the image above, we were undecided upon the color scheme and whether we should use the inverse or not. As a result, Shayam and I did some more audience feedback. The majority preferred the white text on the black background, however after a group meeting we felt that the black text would juxtapose the white text on the front cover and therefore the panels would work together more cohesively. We then decided to use our 4 profile shots on the left hand panel in order to anchor our individual representations and help give the audience a further sense of the band.

Here are the final outside and inside covers:

Final Outside Cover

Final Inside Cover

Overall, I have really enjoyed doing this album cover and I am very happy with the results.