Constructing our Digipak and booklet!

This is the net we used as our template for our digipak. This digipak would be simple and cheap to make minimising manufacturing costs and thus maximising profits. It is also easy to open and close and easy to use.Nothing to distract the costumer from the product with over the top packaging. It’s blunt and straight to the point so what you pay for is in effect what you get.As a hugely successful global artist Lady Gaga would release the new material in single album format to maximise profits.

We started our digipak cover by going through all the photos I had taken and put into the 'image bank'. We then chose our two favourite pictures after a lot of consideration. We wanted something that would fit in with our album poster as well as represent the artist well and increase the selling of her album. We like these two pictures as they showed a vulnerable and more 'human' side to Lady Gaga which perhaps isn't shown in some of her more aggressive album artwork or magazine posters and adverts. We felt that the title to the album 'Born This Way' would go nicely with a natural shot of just Lady Gaga without props or distracting costumes but herself in her 'natural' 'how-she-was-born' state.

Picture 2 (medium shot of Gaga) I adore beacause her face is looking to the side so she would be looking at any potential writing placed in the black space. I also love the colours and the lighting in this shot as it is very dramatic with bright skins and eyes agaisnt her dark, sharp bob and black background.

Picture 1 (close up shot of her face) I liked because it felt personal as the camera is very close to her face making the audience connect with her both on an artistic and appreciative level as well as personal level. It makes us feel like we know Gaga. It also gives her a vulnerable and 'more human’ with less of a high profile celebrity status and none of her usual glamorous and possibly intimidating costumes or makeup. This enables the audience to connect with her and relate with her as we feel like she is 'one of us'. This picture reminds me of the R.E.M song 'Everybody Hurts' as it reminds us that even Gaga, intimidating and confident as she is, is only human and sometimes can't meet the pressure her job demands and that she too hurts sometimes making us as an audience sympathize with her and like her more.

We placed our picture over a black background as this would be the background colour of our digipak however you could see the colour difference between the black from our picture which was lighter and more ‘grainy’ than the black background. I uploaded the picture onto photoshop and used the eraser tool to remove the pictures original background so when I placed it back on the black background of my digipak net you could no longer see that the black background and the picture of Lady Gaga were two separate images placed on top of each other.We used the cropper tool to crop out Gaga’s shoulder so her black leotard fades into the background so there is nothing distracting the audience from her face. I also enlarged the image of her head to fit the contents of the frame better.We increased the contrast of the image to make Gaga’s face brighter and hence stand out more and making her more noticable. ‘Selling’ the artist as being the main focus of her album. The now brighter image is also now in bolder colours of white, yellow and black. Her hair is also shinier. This effect makes the album artwork fit better for a pop album as it is bright and playful thus following conventions of pop album covers.

We experimented with many fonts on powerpoint and these were our favourites. We decided instantly that white would be the most effective colour to use for the writing as I had used it already for the poster as it stands out the most against the black. This makes the writing clear, bold and straight-to-the-point, standing out beyond other albums. We wanted Lady Gaga to be written as big as possible in capital letters and bold so that her name would stand out from the album as people buy her album with an expectation of the artist. If Lady Gaga stands out even people who don’t know the album yet but like the artist would buy the album. It also increases the artist’s profile as her status as a celebrity increases with her album sales by having her name dominating her album it would increase her fame. We like ‘Born This Way’ with lines across it as it looks like a music score for notation for classical music which emhasizes that this is album is a ‘classic’; a must have item. It also emphasizes on the fact that Lady Gaga herself is a piano player of classical music and in her song ‘Marry The Night’ featuring on this album it includes classical music by Beethoven in the introduction.

We used the internet to find which songs are on this album and copied and pasted her most popular tracks onto the tracklist. We again used white as it is the most effective colour to use for the writing as I had used it already for the poster and front cover to the digipak. Also, it stands out the most against the black making the writting clear, bold and straight-to-the point, standing out beyond other albums. We put the font in italic so that it looks like it’s been hand written making the album more personal to the audience as if Lady Gaga wrote out the track list herself creating a deeper connection with her audience.

We used spacing and the size of the tracks in order to contour the words around her face making the album more creative and artistic which Lady Gaga is often associated with.

This is our digipak spine. We only used GAGA instead of her full stage name being Lady Gaga as we felt she she is known so well that even just Gaga would be clear to her audience as her. We also feel its straight to the point and by using less letters it enabled us to increase the font size. Like the front cover we did her name in capital letter to ensure it stands out from other albums with ‘Born this way’ written in italics, again to make it more personal and we felt that it looked more elegant like this.

After experimenting we tried the digipak covers flipped over so the image that was previously the back cover is now the front cover and vice-versa. We felt that this front cover is more effective as you can see more of her face and it’s a clearer less edited image. We kept the tracklist in the same shape as we like how it looks likes arrows pointing to the institutional information which I copied and pasted in from her real born this way album. We also kept the fonts the same but with Lady Gaga written below her image instead of above so to not cover her head.

We decided this image would be good for where the CD is placed as it is the same as the back cover but with her eyes open instead of closed so it creates a synergistic link with the other picture and doesn’t look out of place or ‘random’.We used photoshop to enhance and change the colours of the picture. We increased the contrast and brightness of the image and decreased the saturation to change the colour to a cold black and white.We then placed the image onto powerpoint and cropped the image to fit the net frame and used the tool shape to make white circles for the template of where the CD would be placed.

This is the net for our digipak booklet in page-printing order. We used this to put my images over.

This is the final layout of our net for our digipak booklet with the images inserted in their places. Some pictures are upside down because that is how they would be sent to the printer so that it prints on the back of the page above it.