DIGIPAK ADVERT PLANNING

by Victor Chi-Chung Chan

NEW STUDIO ALBUM FOR THE KILLERS

PRODUCT IDEA

For our product, we are going to create a new studio album for The Killers. Therefore we will follow the conventions of their studio albums, such as their styles, composition of the cover for your digipak. Apart from that, we still have some elements which differ from their conventions.

Because this is a new album, so we will name all the new songs except our music video is regarded as a remake version.

Since The Killers is a band founded in Las Vegas, there are many elements in their music videos emphasising they come from a city. So we want to remain their city-band image in our new album. The theme in our new album is also about city, but we don't want to highlight the grandness of city. Instead, following the pessimistic tone of The Killers’ work, we want to introduce another side of a city. A image of city which is not beautiful as people assume, this is exactly the rebellion of the rock genre. We think a city makes people lost, this is the initial idea of this album. As a result, we decided to name the album ‘The Lost’.

DIGIPAK PLANNING

FINAL DRAFT

DRAFT OF DIGIPAK

We want to create a 6-panel digipak which includes front cover, back cover, inner cover, booklet, CD and DVD in order to feature more things for audiences to experience from this album. So one CD is not enough, we will have a DVD with their footages, including the music video, will absolutely attract audience to buy this new album.

FIRST DRAFT

In this first draft, we listed what contents we are going to include on each panel. We didn’t visualise anything at first but only listed so we could have details on each part.

DRAFT OF DIGIPAK

After listing out all the details on every part, we needed another draft with graphics on it. Since we have visualised our ideas, we now know how it will look approximately.

FINAL DRAFT

All panels on the digipak need to have a constant colour tone so there won’t be any discontinuity of the style.

Also, we will use city landscape of Hong Kong for the digipak because it is a good representative of city. All the photos we adopted are found from Google. We will use some photos I have already taken by myself before.

FIRST DRAFT OF DIGIPAKFRONT COVER

This is the front cover of the digipak. On the top, there is the band logo in big font. The supporting title with smaller size underneath is the album title. Because the band’s name is more important, the band itself is a brand to their audiences. So the band’s name should be larger.

Darker colour: According to our audience research, most of the interviewees/respondents said that they like to see darker colours. In order to enhance such depression, we decreased the brightness of the original photo.

FRONT COVER

Compare with other albums from The Killers, we followed many conventions of them to remain their styles.

In the examples from The Killers below, I picked these three albums to side-by-sidedly compare to our design. Their albums usually follow a composition of placing the titles on the centre/top with a landscape placed on the bottom third. Top two thirds of the CD front cover is usually or just one pure colour as the sky so there are not many things stealing attention from the titles.

1st album 3rd album 4th album 5th album

DRAFT OF DIGIPAKBACK COVER

Following all the conventions of digipaks, the back cover contains all the information about the product is listed on this panel.

The basic contents on this page are the track list and the legal text. Because people need to know what songs they will listen to if they buy this album. We reckon the album will contain 12 songs. More than that, we also decided to include a DVD in it. Therefore there will be 2 lists on the back cover to show all the digital contents in the discs.

On the bottom is the legal details of the music and all the materials used for this product. Because all the materials in this album are original, so they should be listed and protected by copyright. They all are the bar code, label records and company who are responsible for it.

CD & DVD

According to the other studio albums’ CDs, the designs of them are usually simple and minimal. Only one main colour dominates a whole disc with some text on it. But the colour has to differ from the other colours used in the digipak so we can emphasise the main products.

Since we have both CD & DVD in our product, we would like to separate them to 2 panels. So they don't need to be cramped, but have their own space so they look more important.

CD & DVD FINAL DRAFT

In our plan, we will only use a single colour for each disc. It has been a convention of The Killers since their first studio album - Hot Fuss was released. They only used red to dominate the whole surface of the disc with some texts to label the band.

We did not plan much on the CD & DVD design because we don't mean to have any graphic on the discs.

Since the colour motif of this album is black/grey, so we keep this colour on every element as possible as we can. We also want the CD & DVD be more customised. So the colours of the discs are different as the CD is grey and the DVD is dark blue.

The Killers Hot Fuss

CD design

DRAFT OF INNER PAGESBOOKLET

Since we mainly use images, such visual elements to address messages to the audiences, there is no much space for us to add text in the digipak. Therefore, we have the digipak to contain a booklet.

The booklet will include information of the CD & DVD. For example the lyrics, the ideas of the album, some making-of contents. Audiences can know more about the background and the intents of The Killers.

In order to contain the booklet, there will be a black paper covering the booklet on top so the book doesn't fall off.

DRAFT OF INNER PAGESINNER COVER

This is an inner page of this digipak which contains some contents apart from covers and the discs. They are some messages.

There are many messages from the band are wanted to be addressed to audiences. Most of the deeper meanings of the album are told inside the booklet. So this page has one page, there wont be many messages to tell compared to the booklet. This inner cover only contains the separate photos of each band members and introduction of the band.

MAGAZINE ADVERT PLANNING

In order to promote our product to music lovers, advertising is one of the most direct way to address the audiences.

Because the main purpose of this advert is about the new album, so all the contents focus on the album itself.

The first draft here is for us to mark down how to compose the information onto an A4-size page. The advert contains all the essential information audiences need to know, such as the band, album title, release date, etc.

FIRST DRAFT

MAGAZINE ADVERT PLANNINGFINAL DRAFT After we have composed all the contents, we made a final draft to visualise the contents.

Band name - The Killers: Because the band itself is the brand is the most attraction for people to buy the product, so we set the band’s title in the largest font in the whole poster.Album title - The Lost: The most important information following the band’s title because it is also the product’s title. Therefore we placed in right under the band with a smaller font to hint the audiences that it is a product by The Killers.

Releasing date: Just like promoting a film, the releasing date of the film is a must in the promotional package. Because we need to inform the audiences when the product is available.

All the supporting information, such as releasing date of the product and official website, is placed on the bottom of the poster:

Main image: The background is a city landscape of Hong Kong, which is the concept of this album which is about the people feeling lost in a big city. The photo is also used for the front cover, so the audiences can recognise the appearance of the album.

MAGAZINE ADVERT PLANNINGFINAL DRAFT After we have composed all the contents, we made a final draft to visualise the contents.

Song featured: Before an album is released, there are usually some songs have already been released on Youtube or other social media so that audiences can listen some of the songs as a preview before they decide whether they should buy the album or not. In this poster, we notice the audiences that this hit single - For Reasons Unknown is featured in this album. So it might arouse the interest of the audiences to buy the album if they like the song.

Website & record label: - A website is listed on the poster for the audiences who are interested in this album can search for more information online. Because we rely on the Internet, so we don't list all the information on one poster. - The record labels are placed at 2 bottom corners. They must be shown on the poster because these companies are responsible for it. Also some audiences’ tendency of purchase might be affected by the record labels since some record labels distribute some specific genres of music.