The layout of the digipak conforms to conventions of rock pop album artwork by using 4 panels, with panel 1 featuring a large eye-catching image relating to the band's music video. Panels 2 and 3 feature simpler images continuing the theme, while still being eye-catching. Panel 1 replicates Andy Warhol's pop art style using different shots of the singer at beach huts, referencing the music video. Panel 2 features an overlay of the singer on a sunset to suggest surrealism. Panel 4 uses bright colors instead of the typical black and white to match the upbeat songs. The magazine ad also conforms to conventions by using album imagery and highlighting release details.

1. Evaluation Q1
Section 2
(Print)

2. The layout
We used a conventional layout with 4 panels of a digipak to reflect the rock pop
album artwork like Fall Out Boy and Greenday. They display a large eye catching
image either of the band or with some connotations towards the music video,
such as Fall Out Boys’ “American Beauty/ American Psycho”s front panel is of the
main character from the music video. Within panel 2 and 3, a more simplistic
image is used to allow the CD to be more eye catching, but the same theme will
follow from the front cover through the inside panels and to the back. For
example in the Fall Out Boy digipak shown, all the images are in a high contrast
black and white and all reflect either the music video or the star image of the
band. Although I didn’t keep to the same black and white theme, I used bright
colours throughout the digipak to reflect the theme within the song and to make
the album stand out.

3. For panel 1, I wanted to recreate Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe pop art collage,
with the vibrant colours all the same photo but with different effects. I recreated
this using the bright colours but used different shots of Lauren with different
poses at different beach huts to reference the beach dream within our music
video. In one way this conforms to the stereotypical albums of pop rock as it
reflects the music video and suggests the main theme; in our case dreaming and
the idea of reality vs illusion. However, it also conforms to the Britishness of the
band through the beach huts. Although we didn’t use a title of the album, I felt
that just the name of the band making the album self titled has more impact as
they are an up and coming band and their name and star image is
Panel 1

4. Panel 2 & 3
For panel 2, I over-layed an image of Lauren onto a sunset and reduced the opacity so both
images could be seen. I then only made the shadows shown to allow an almost silhouette to be
created. In the final image for the panel, the sunset overlaps onto Lauren’s face almost
referencing David Bowie’s album cover “The Aladdin Sane”. It suggests ideas of surrealism and
again, the alternative world. The conventional way of displaying the inside panels of a digipak
for the rock pop genre is through simplicity and minimalist colours, shown below in The 1975, 5
Seconds of Summer and 21 Pilots. In addition, the genre don’t use the stars image, rather
focusing on a pattern or texture to lie behind the CD. We challenge this convention through
using a bright coloured sunset with an image of the performer from the music video, but
keeping the image behind the cd as just the colours from the sunset. This reinforces the idea of
the song and it’s bright and carefree attitude.

5. Panel 4
On the back of the digipak there were 2 opposing conventions that the rock pop genre used. One
is using a black and white tone to create an atmospheric tone which reflects the style/emotions
within their songs on their album. One example is Adele’s “21” album where she uses this black
and white effect on her digipak to reflect the sombre emotion of the songs. The other is the bright
coloured/ happy/ exciting and eye-catching album covers such as P!nks album “I’m not dead”
which uses the bright red to stand out and an image of the artist to signify the importance of star
image when selling an album. We used both conventions to influence our own digipak which uses
the convention of the star image from the music video and the bright colours. Although we
initially used a black and white filter, we felt that because the rest of the digipak was in colour, it
wouldn’t flow. Additionally, the colour reflects the upbeat tempo and feeling of the songs.

6. Mag Advert
Finally, the conventions of the magazine advert include using the same imagery as the
album, having a review from a famous music magazine such as NME or Q and
promoting what date the album will be out. So we used one of the beach hut photos
we took while on location in Cromer. We also used a border at the bottom to highlight
the information for the release of the album. Our magazine advert conforms to the
Rock pop genre, shown
below in the examples
Arctic Monkeys and Pan!
c at the Disco.