Step 1.
The first thing I did when creating my digipak was to draft an idea of what I wanted it to look like in my exercise book. I used a pencil to draw my idea, and I believe that my final idea was quite similar. I immediately decided I would be making it A5 size in Photoshop CS3, and decided to use the font 'Star Avenue' from Dafont.com. I decided to include small symbols that show where Architecture in Helsinki can be found, ie Twitter, Facebook. I also wanted include a QR code that smartphone users can scan to get to the band's official website. I wanted the print to mostly consist of a sunrise background, with a small crocodile in the foreground, with the band's name and album name the main point of interest, however I discovered that we were not allowed to use found images as the main focus of our work, so instead I decided to use a still from the actual footage we obtained in Haysden park in Tonbridge.
Step 2.
I began to create my piece on Photoshop. The background used was a still from a video taken by myself in Haysden park in Tonbridge, and I have used an image of a crocodile found on the internet in the bottom centre of the image. It is shrouded in darkness because of the lighting of the photo, and I believe it creates enigma. The only real problems I encountered were the size and shape of the crocodile not fitting into the background properly, by I effectively combatted this by making it smaller and darker, so it is slightly less noticeable. I used the magnetic lasso tool to remove the background from the crocodile, so it would look more real in the background. I also used a translucent colour overlay over the crocodile to make it look darker and more natural in the environment. I also colour corrected the background by using a pale blue overlay on a very low opacity, making the image seem colder.
Step 3.
Next I decided to add the main title of the print. I used the font 'Star Avenue' from dafont.com for my main font, and I typed my words into the website then print screened and imported the images, cropping them down and using the magic wand tool to remove all background from the text. I then put a colour overlay over the top of the text to make it white, and included a shadow on all text to give it a slightly 3D look, as if it is coming out of the page, a very eye-catching feature. I used a thin black shadow at an angle of 107 degrees for each piece of text for continuity. I put a translucent grey rectangle behind the text to make it stand out even more, and create a simplistic style. I had to ensure the fonts were central and lined up with each other, so it would not look uneven. I decided not to abide by the rule of thirds, as the band's name is far too long to include in either third of the print. I decided that if I were to put any other titles within the rule of thirds it would look messy and unprofessional, so I centralised them too, and fortunately Photoshop automatically snaps different layers together in central positions.
Step 4.
This is my final printwork design. I have utilised many of the skills learnt earlier in the year when creating this A5 piece, and I believe that they have been very helpful in creating this piece of work. I have included several logos at the bottom which symbolise the band's integration with social media, showing that they are on Facebook, and Twitter. I created and included a QR code which can be scanned by smartphone users and will redirect them to Architecture in Helsinki's official website. I used a mixture of the magnetic lasso and magic wand tools to remove the background from the Facebook and Twitter logos, and to create the date of release title I used the same technique as I did when creating the other titles, except I did not centralise it due to the crocodile being in the centre bottom of the image. A problem I encountered was the twitter logo being very pixellated. I combatted this by just deleting the layer altogether and creating a new one with a different twitter logo.
I decided to relate my print to some of Architecture in Helsinki's real work, including their official website design and layout, and the actual digipak for the 'Moment Bends' albums. They both have simplistic themes with cold colour schemes, which is what I hope to have acheived in my final print. However, it does not relate to AIH's earlier work, such as the images of them with colourful blankets, as instead of going for a colourful theme, I have decided to use fairly dull, cold colours. We all decided to use the recurring theme of the crocodile as a kind of visual link between all of our different texts. It has been included in all of our prints and the digipak, and is the protagonist of our music video. We hope this will create a band image for AIH. It does conform to some generic conventions of indie pop, as artists within the genre often use dull colours or cold themes, as it matches the type of music.
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