Album Inspiration

For our half term homework, we was set to go re-search albums and websites of artists which inspired us or who are in the same genre of music with the artist we are doing. For this, we went to HMV when we met and looked at CD's and took photo's (with the stores premisson). We have allready posted the Kesha CD in much detail, this is because she is the artist we are doing, we can then interpret this into developing our own CD. This post is for rest of the CD's.

Lady Gaga.
Lady Gaga is one of the major pop stars at the current time and with this alone we thought was a 100% look at.

This is the cover and the back of Lady Gaga's first album 'The Fame'. Again like the Kesha album, we can see the front cover is a close up of the artists face. This is to represent the artist but to also get the face and image out to the public, this is something which we have picked up on and may use. This is very generic for the pop genre. It focuses on the artists image, something which most pop stars do these days. The mise en scene with the black background contrasting with her pale face and white hair again draw the attention back to her.

The back of the album does exactly the same thing as the front. It draws to the image of the artists as being crazy and wacky, something which she is. We have also noticed that the name is on the front AND back of the album, she is promoting herself majorly, getting her name out. This is something which we are going to use on our CD cover.

 This is the inside of the CD and the inside of the booklet. The inside of the cover again is promoting her and her image. However what is different is the CD itself, it is very plain and almost dull, this is a contrast to the rest of the CD. We think this is because not many people see the CD itself cause they are listening to the songs on the stereo. This is something we have picked up on and will use towards the making of our CD.
The booklet again is very self promoting, while also catching the audiences eye. This is something we need to pick up, since when asking a few people we know, not many people even look in the booklet when buying a CD. We are deciding to make our booklet eye catching so that they will pick it up and look inside it.

Rihanna
Rihanna is a well known figure in the music industry. She makes similar, but totally different songs to kesha, this is a reason why we choose to look at her.

 

Like above, this is the front and back of the CD. Just like any other pop CD, the front cover is a close up of the artist. Again this is to support there individual image of this artists. It also self promotes the artist and their songs. We can also see that on the cover they are promoting what songs are on the album, this is unusual since many pop stars don't do this. We also see that they is no emphasis on Rihanna's name. They are expecting people to know who she already is, this is totally different compared to Lady Gaga's album, the emphasis is all on her name. The black and white effect works well on this CD cover.
However the back is very generic of a pop CD, this is because they is a long shot of the artist. This is to promote the artists image. It is also to lead the audience into buying the CD. For example, Rihanna isn't fully facing us, only her head in, this will intrigue the artist since it represents her songs and therefore they will buy it.

However, the two images (front and back) and very different, one is very in your face upfront, her eyes look like there staring at you, whereas the other is very tempting and secret.

 

This is the inside of the CD and the inside of the booklet. The first thing which i find interesting about this is that all the images are different, unlike lady gaga where she uses the cover of her booklet and the back of the CD the same image. The Cover of the booklet is very interesting. The negative technique is used here, it's used very effectively. Again the CD is very plain with only a 'R' on it. This is to draw attention to the image of the artist rather than the image of the product itself. This is something we are on about using.
Inside the booklet is very different, it's very image based whereas Lady Gaga's booklet is very lyric and text based. This again is effective since it draws the reader back to the image of the artists, while also giving information about the lyrics.

Kate Nash

Kate Nash is a very popular artist within the target age group which we are aiming for. This is the reason why we decided to look at her.

 

Like the others, this is the back and front of the CD cover. Also like the others we see that the artists is on the front of the CD. This again is self promotion. We can see that the most striking thing on the CD cover is the name 'Kate Nash' The text stands out because of its difference in looking like its been written, we could include this kind of text on our cd cover. Kate nash has a very simple looking cd cover and has a picture of her on it. Her picture relates to the type of music she creates as it is very child like, as though shes talking through her songs instead of singing. She is a more classy artist compared to Ke$ha because Ke$ha is more of a party girl in her videos. The layout of the songs on the back cover is abit mish mash as they are arranged sid by side and numbered.

Another Digipak we looked at was Ellie Gouldings' album 'Lights'. We chose to look at this artist because she aims at the same target audience as Ke$ha although her music genre of Indie-Pop is slightly different to that of Ke$ha and this is reflected in the Digipak.

The front and back covers of the Digipak are both quite appropriate to an indie genre as they  are both quite simple in layout and fonts etc. Although there are features on the front and back covers appropriate to the pop genre. These features include a close up of the artist as the dominant image covering the front cover as they are the main focus. Other features include the use of glitter and colours such as gold contrasted on a plain black background; this is similar to our artist Ke$ha's colour scheme on her album.

The mise-en-scene of the front and back covers is very minimal. With no setting, little lighting and no costume visible. The use of having no setting emphasises the importance of the artist and her music opposed to any props or gimmicks. There is some lighting on the front cover of the CD by use of the dark black background and some lighting on the artist's face to make her stand out on the cover and be the main attraction. In terms of costume, no particular outfit is visible apart from the strap of a black top visible which once more adds to the effect of making the artists face stand out from everything else on the cover. The artists hair is a major feature of the CD cover with it being loosely curled to connotate innocence with glitter and bright lighting highlighting points on her hair and face, which contains little makeup to make her appear natural and pure to her audience. 

The layout on this front and back cover is the most simple layout of all the digipak's we researched. This is highly effective upon the artist's audience as it portrays a persona of her music being the main focus rather than props or effects. The back cover also has a plain black background to help the font stand out and catch peoples eyes. The font on the front and back covers is gold to stand out against the plain black background. It is also in a simple bold font for emphasis. The main font on the front cover saying the artist's name and album name also has an effect of the titles themselves being lights to parallel the album name.

The dominant image and simple style help sell the artist as serious about their music though the use of glitter also reflects the artist having a fun side to her personality.


(Same as the website we saved this as a draft before publishing it)