EN: Digipak Ancillary Product

Stage 1

My first step in creating a Digipak for Radiohead’s “Talk Show Host” was to think of an initial concept or idea. In my artwork I wanted to encapsulate the abstract and polysemic features of previous Radiohead album covers, while also promoting the themes expressed in our primary promotional product to create a cohesive marketable package. To do this I planned to amplify the concepts expressed within the music video of; mankind’s impact on the natural world around him, the stagnation of corporate life in a materialistic society and the feeling of existentialism in a trapped reality, by utilising a collection of Mise-en-scene props that would express these themes using semiotic code. In preparation I began to sketch the ideas onto paper so I had a clear idea on the specific shots I needed to do:

Front Cover:

A close up of a heart on a white/grey background or at the back of the brief case

Back Cover:

An image of ivy leaves in a glass vase. One possible idea to reflect themes is to replace the stems of the leaves with wire to connote man’s impact on the natural world.

Inside Cover:

A heart pinned to the inside of a brief case to represent materialistic values oppressing the individual. An alternative to this would be to have a hole cut into the briefcase and the heart exposed within.

CD Cover:

Using neon lights in the dark to wrap around in a circle around the middle of the disc

Stage 2

After I had established the original concepts I began to research on the different camera techniques I should employ went shooting the shots for real. It is then I stumbled across the technique of Light Painting through Youtube Videos:

Light Painting is a camera method that involves setting a camera to a manual focus, slow shutter speed, apature of 22 and a Iso number of 200, then using off screen lighting to literally paint an object, like using a paint brush, to light up certain areas of the prop. This creates an almost surreal airbrush effect over the object which looked very professional without the need for expensive equipment. I organized a shoot for Thursday the 29th November using a Cannon 50D camera. On the day I set up some black sheets to stop excess light and began to shoot some test shots of the leaves of ivy and glass for the back cover, these were the first results:

 As you can see the shots were not very successful, the images were too dark and the objects could not be seen. However a useful bi-product of the situation was found when I dragged the torch on screen of the camera it created whispy strands of light, and when I pointed it straight at the camera lense it formed weird burnt streaks on the image. Because of this I decided to alter my back cover to incorporate this effect and this consequently resulted in this, which I decided to keep for my final back cover:

 Stage 3

My next step was to shot the front and inside cover of the heart in a brief case. Like my back cover I used the light painting effect, but this time I made sure that I kept the light source of the camera screen and used a more powerful torch to illuminate the image more. Although I found difficulty in painting such a large object in the given camera exposer time, with failed attempts such as this:

And had difficulty in keeping the light source out of shot:

 I managed to capture my final inside cover picture:

I then employed the same technique to a close up of the heart as my front cover image:

 Stage 4

After my photo shoot I realised I needed to use an image to further link directly all our groups ancillary products. I then came up with the idea that maybe I should use the same visual technique of magnifying plant matter to create a cellular pattern onto my disc. This not only would look good visually but would also represent a coherent promotion package tied to the ad campaign. I took a circular section of the image that I liked in Photoshop CS3, used a clone stamp tool to erase and cover up the unwanted needle shape in the foreground using existing parts of the image: and then fitted it to the correct dimensions of the CD using the circular marquee tool. This is what the final result looked like:

 After this I tweaked the other images for my digipak and added text in Photoshop CS3. For the back cover I used the classic Radiohead font (Futuristic Fixed-width font) to add the track listings from the Bends Special Edition, utilizing the iconic underscoring in the text that the band utilizes and felt that the image was too dark , so I added a new adjustment layer for colour and balance onto the original photograph:

For the inside cover I also added a colour and balance layer to control the contrast and brightness of the image and also used the clone stamp tool to create more black areas on top of the image to make it fit the proper dimensions, which was quite difficult to do:

Next I added the font to the front cover and used a gradient tool to fade the grey of the middle of the image to black at the edges, so the images can fade into each other:

The final step was to collate all my images together in the digipak template and create an album cover binder from a section of my front cover:

  THE FINAL VERSION

 Analysis

In what ways does your print product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of other similar products?

Our re-issued Special Edition of The Bends by Radiohead appeals to a specific target audience. This is because although catering to younger, new fans of the group, The Bends was originally released in 1995 and this means it would specifically attract those people who had already bought it at this time, this leaves us with a demographic of fans roughly aged between 14 and 30. This factor combined with the fact that Radiohead is of a Psychedelic Rock genre, makes us see that my digigpak does indeed follow several conventions of similar products in this situation.  I used font that is associated to the meta-narrative of Radiohead, a technique often used of album covers to immediately connote an artist just from visual motifs. Also utilising the use of abstract pictures containing visual elements that often have ulterior connotations to the reader is a trend often seen in artwork of this genre and band to create artistic polysemic texts.

On the other hand my printwork does also challenge some forms in the psychadelic rock genre. For one it takes advantage of the fanbase the band has already built up. Instead of telling the consumer the title of the album and its detail on the front  cover, it instead employs a subtle engima to draw people in by simply having the words “Special Edition” with no mention,except on the side of the case, of the album name. I think this subtly plays up to the sort of artistic and experimentation that existing fans of Radiohead would expect.

How does your product link to other print and moving image products your group has constructed?

As a group we realised that to best target our choosen demographic and to create an effective marketable package, not only to market the single “Talk Show Host” but also the Special Edition album, both our primary and three ancillary products must work in correlation as a coheisive package. This meant using similar visual motifs of font and mise-en-scene in all our media sources. The three ancillary products all employ props and visual images that amplify the themes expressed in the Music Video through semiotic meanings. An example of this the theme of corporate oppression representated by the suit in the music video and the heart in briefcase in the digipak, and also the themes of man and nature represented by the image of a figure in medical equipment in our advertisement and the lillo floating in the lake in our music video. Also my Digipak also relates to the other products we have done in our group by the simple fact that it is very disjunctive to the music it is associated with. This is a common technique in Psychadelic Rock media forms as the artwork is often accepted as a stand alone piece of art, separate to that of the music itself.