For my digipack, I took alot of influence from various other album cover designs. I used several conventions from them. Firstly my album cover consists of a simple, black and white image and brightly coloured lettering. This idea of using brightly coloured text on Black & White imagrey was influenced by early punk rock album covers like
London Calling by British Punk act The
Clash and
Rocket to Russia by The Ramones. Another album cover to do this effectively is the cover for the influential Rock/Blues album
Rain Dogs by American musician and actor Tom Waits. I really like this stlye and think that it is an effective way of catching a buyer's eye and selling albums and artists, which is what album covers are meant to do.
The simple colour scheme is also influenced by album covers like
Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy and
American Idiot by Green Day. These covers use only three colours in their artwork. This simple colour scheme again helps the covers stand out. I thought it would be a good idea to use in my digipak.
I noticed that one of the most frequently used conventions in album cover design is using images of the artists face staring directly into the camera. This links to Goodwin's theory of Selling the artist by showing them in a close up image, meaning that the audiences eyes are drawn to them. This happens in most music genres.
From Pop:
to Hip Hop:
and Rock/Metal
My Website was inspired by many different band websites, mostly the Arctic Monkeys website.
Both Websites employ a simple design and layout that is simple to navigate (due to the table at the top leading to different pages) and use a simple colour scheme. Both websites contain videos, bios and information about the artists. Both are good at selling the artist. Many websites use a similar layout.
My Video uses many music video conventions, theories and movies as influence.
Firstly my video uses Goodwin's music video theory. The theory states that music videos must link to the songs genre conventions, as well as its musical and lyrical themes. My video links to the songs lyrical themes of fame and beauty by having the model in the video becoming increasingly unstable throughout the video. The theory also states that the sole purpose of video's should be to sell to the song and artist. My video features frequent close ups and mid-shots of the artist, making the audience remember their appearance. The video also uses Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory by showing the model in various voyeuristic shots and poses. However, the video also challenges this by showing how the model's beauty makes her unhappy, questioning our cultures ideas on fame and beauty. In the video, I have also featured a few shots of the model's makeup being smeared, suggesting that beauty is only skin deep. The idea of using Male Gaze, however, also means that the video is following the conventions of Rock videos as many videos in this genre use attractive girls dancing or acting voyeuristic in them. In many Rock/Metal videos this convention is used.
There is also some intertextuality in the video. During the instrumental in the middle of the song, I used unusual, sweeping camera movements inspired by the camera work in Gaspar Noe's film
Irreversible and the colour of the Dark Room in the photography lab was inspired by Mark Romanek's
One Hour Photo. I found both these elements created an unsettling feeling (as did both movies) so I decided to use similar techniques to create a similar feeling of uneasiness. The red lights in the sequence are also significant as red has connotations of lust and passion, but also of anger,danger and fear, linking the two themes of the video. Another colour I used was a green tint for one of the segments. Green has connotations of envy, which fit in the theme of fame and popularity very well.
I think that on the whole, the products I have created are creative and fit their purpose.
