Photoshop & first drafts

I used phototshop for two main parts of the project - manipulating the photography and creating the still products. 

Fonts had to be downloaded as none of the preliminary fonts looked professional enough, and it was the research I had done on similar products was really helpful in finding my final fonts.  

For each file of the digipak, a template was put in place to help them have the right look, I learnt how to place layers and to use the type tool to add text such as the band name and album cover title. 

I've included some early drafts below which show how much can be improved from the first draft, to the final which was completed on the 15th of February.

It started with one layer, just of the image and through using the Horizontal Type Tool the album title, "On The Edge" was added. Effects were then put in including Gradient Overlay and this is why part of the image has a comic-book appearance. This is the first draft of the front cover.

The final result is quite different and was achieved by responding to a lot of feedback and learning new skills, including placing the layers in appropriate order and adding new layer styles, especially when it came to adding Inner and Outer Glows on the titles and balancing them with a Drop Shadow.

The first idea for the back cover was to have the image be of a brick wall and place graffiti to create something that was urban iconography. However it breaks too much with convention, as it's very different to the other images throughout the digipak and the mise-en-scene doesn't fit as the composition is all over the place.






Instantly the final back cover connotes what the attitudes and beliefs are of the digipak, especially in combination with the titles so this follows conventions more clearly than the first draft and attracts the target audience of sixteen to twenty-five better.

Although I like From Street Art font, in this second draft here there's too much of it....





For the magazine advert - my original intention was to just have a dark background as by having the fonts, image of Peter and front cover stand out, it's clearly going after the target demographic.














Through feedback however it was learned the ideology wasn't made clear enough, so the background was adjusted to the background from the front cover, and the result works much better, and the products tie in together better.













By the time I was working on the CD/DVD itself I had gained enough knowledge about Photoshop and about media language to know how far to break from convention and when to pull back. As a result the only change made was taking   out the background layer so that just the CD artwork is left.