1. Album coverevaluation
For Production we were told to come up with both a character and produce a digi-pack cover
for the purpose of Andy Mallen (M.boy) and his new album titled “Video boy”. My first thought
was to begin researching into how digi-packs of similar quality are laid out normally. Whilst
looking into the layout of our pack we had to research and come up with a design for thefront,
spine, back, lyric section and disk impression whilst also having to consider the print style we
were going to use for our pack and experiment with different techniques, materials and styles. I
began with designing three separate albums for different band of my own design, purely so that
I have an opportunity to experiment with colour, contrast and layout of an album cover.
Whilst designing my album covers I did two initial designs. One which had a more cartoon like
style to it in order to make its appearance more appealing and the other being made up of a
simple logo that was designed so that it stood out completely from the rest of the album cover.
LEFT: Old
cartoon video
boy album design
RIGHT: New
video boy logo
album design
The main reason I chose to do these two designs is because I wanted to see which type of age
group would benefit more from this sort of music and so made these designs in an attempt to
see which would work. To me both designs stand out to me, my first design for it cartoon like
appearance as many album covers don’t seem to follow the same designs as mine does, whilst
my logo design stands out for it use of colour and the contrast between the logo itself and the
background that I picked for it.
After producing both albums I produced a survey asking which
design people would most prefer and why. The results were
fairly mixed but more people preferred the album I designed
with just the logo on it, quoting that they like the simplicity of
the design, how it seems much more professional due to the
contrast between the colours and the background. So from what
I can make out after producing my survey is that most people
would prefer the second logo as it seems to relate more to other
modern designs and products.
I believe that another main reason why people seemed to grow fonder of my second album
design was because the layout was much simpler compared to my first album. The layout is
much simpler and doesn’t consist of loads of extreme pictures, which I think made the first
cover much more complex. With the new album the cover has three main aspects, the logo, the
title at the bottom and the black background. By making
sure that the logo and title are the same colour, it helps
point out that they are related whilst making sure that
they stand out completely against the background. I
didn’t wish to have any pictures for the background as I
was worried it would make the overall result too
complex for an album cover. One of the references I
looked back on occasionally was the design shown above
of the “Harmonic” album as it has a very simple pattern

2. whilst still managing to make itself look appealing and eye catching. For the inside of the cover
itself again I didn’t want to create anything to complicated either so I stuck with simple designs
but I first planned out how I would set about having my album laid out. I chose to go with a
layout similar to the plan shownabove as most digi-packs are designed with this style in mind.
For backgrounds again I didn’t want to overdo the album with intense photos or pictures so I
went for a design where by the inside covers resembled speakers to help relate what type of
music the CD consists of. The CD itself I chose to have matched the album cover so that again
they elate to one another and means that if people lose the box then they will still be able to
recognize what band the CD plays.
For the artwork and design of the logo the only thing I looked to
for reference was as mentioned earlier the “Harmonic” album,
the logo itself was designed by me completely and had no
referencing to it. However For the font used and the background
for the back cover and DVD inside as inspired by the film
posters for “Tron legacy” which followed a similar design when
it came to having the covers laid out in a grid like style with a
blue font. Although most people liked the design which I worked
on one thing I had to take into consideration was the legal
issues. I designed this album cover to appeal to all age groups
and social groups and is in no way designed to appeal or offend
any religious cultures.
After completing my album cover design I find it safe to say that
I did benefit from this production and managed to learn a great deal in how to produce this form
of media such as how to go about laying out designs. What I think I really learned the most is
that I should never consider placing huge quantities of art and design onto just one side of an
album cover as it does make the album seem clutters and complex, better to keep designs
simple yet effective much like the design I finally went with.
My technical ability overall was acceptable as I managed to produce most of my work with ease
but at first whilst I was working on my first design I found it very difficult to work with certain
programs such as Photoshop as I hadn’t had proper teaching on how to use such programs. But
as I began to work more and more with these programs my skills started improving and before
long I knew my way around the programs much more quickly and easily. When it came to
designing my second album cover I first thought about what would look both creative and yet
appealing. From what I produced on my first album cover I realised that too much is not as good
if it looks rushed which was what happened with my first cover as I was spending much of my
time trying to figure out how to use the programs that we were meant to be working with.
The whole process overall I felt was successful as I accomplished my goal in creating my digi-
pack cover which managed to capture my target audiences interests. I certainly learnt a lot
about the process that is undertaken and how to lay out my research. I found the best way to go
about working up to producing a final piece such as this was to firstly research into other album
covers, figure out where they got their designs and why, before producing my own examples to
test how affective they really can be. What I think really help boost peoples interests in my
cover was by modifying my first digi pack so that it was easier for people to make out what was
on the cover and also to take out a great deal of the work I had put into it which made it much
easier to notice the title of the band and album name. If I could work on it again I would
definitely set myself more time to come up with different designs as time was one of my main
problems and concerns with the making of the cover.